Best New XP Grinding Strat?

[Porcell]

Haven't really seen discussion on this topic yet.

Anyone played around with, or seen other posts elsewhere, but the best experience grinding strategies? Given the 5 stack is worth 45% XP Bonus, I would imagine that a longer session would be better than a shorter run that might be more densely populated.

But the question comes, would it make sense to start at the very start of Act 1 and play all the way through? Start somewhere in the middle? Start at Fallen Angel and do the jump-around and kill Elites, then Jailer / Butcher run? Worth it to clear whole open areas like Fields of Misery and Highlands, along with caves, or keep it to just Elites? How much better is Act 2 or Act 3 verses a super quick and painless Act 1?

I have not spent a lot of time myself fiddling around. If anything the Paragon Grind is actually more interesting to me than the Item Grind, so I'm putting my MF away and putting my power gear back on.

[chadwix]

A1 has like no monsters, i swear i see more mobs in wow than d3 sometimes. This is an arpg game, we wanna mass kill, not fight one guy for 4mins.

Im liking a3 bridge of korsikk, arret crator 1 and 2. Lots of monsters there.

[Porcell]

A1 has like no monsters, i swear i see more mobs in wow than d3 sometimes. This is an arpg game, we wanna mass kill, not fight one guy for 4mins.

Im liking a3 bridge of korsikk, arret crator 1 and 2. Lots of monsters there.

Found a thread on Diablo Fans. They are also saying Act 3 through Arreat Crater is a good run. Bounce around to get 5 stack real fast, then clear those areas with dense mobs.

[Thuld]

Haven't really seen discussion on this topic yet.
Given the 5 stack is worth 45% XP Bonus, .. snip

5 x 15% will give you 75% Bonus. Add in a decent 25% gem in the helm and you will be running 100% XP for most of your run. Farms now are about speed kills so wherever that fits on your sliding scale of gearing against content is the go. I like Act 3 myself but did not try to calculate x million xp per hour for it yet.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

I managed 4.7 million experience in about half an hour in Act 1. Based on 10 bn total experience from 1-100 which I have heard bandied around, that works out to 2128 runs, or a bit over 1000 hours of /played. Split that up as you will.

[Belmorn]

Get a helm with a socket
Insert best red gem you can get your hands on

Other than that just continue playing the act you can grind the fastest be it act 1 2 or 3.

That said, you could just not care about the levels all THAT much since when you finally reach 100 then I give it 90% you will then proceed to uninstall the game.
Getting 100 is going to be one major pain in the butt, Ill probably totally stop caring about them once I reach 40ish.

[nightshark]

Get a helm with a socket
Insert best red gem you can get your hands on

Other than that just continue playing the act you can grind the fastest be it act 1 2 or 3.

That said, you could just not care about the levels all THAT much since when you finally reach 100 then I give it 90% you will then proceed to uninstall the game.
Getting 100 is going to be one major pain in the butt, Ill probably totally stop caring about them once I reach 40ish.

I'm only level 5 and I don't actively think about my levels.. they're just too slow to care about.

You always know you are gaining exp so it gives a feeling that you are making progression, and that is good. If you play all night, get no loot but gain a paragon level, you've done something that will help next time.

[Deleted]

I think everything after Act 3 Siegebreaker is good, fast XP.

It's just a shame though that melee classes can't kill as fast as ranged. This new XP system kinda makes it a big deal.

[BoomChickn]

All I know is that xp seems to scale with act. A single a2 run (Vault of the assassin, cave of the betrayed, great burrower if he pops up, all of archives) nets roughly 7-8m xp with NV and no xp gems (Damn that no socket!)

Act 1 gives about half that (festering woods, cemetary of forsaken, watch tower, cathedral 3, and warden->butcher)

Given typical health scaling... if you can take the hits in higher acts and farm there I say do it.

[Deleted]

Given typical health scaling... if you can take the hits in higher acts and farm there I say do it.

Hmm, I seem to level faster in Act 1 than Act 3. And I find the monsters in Act 2 too far apart, the rooms are too big to be efficient.

Maybe because I can blast through all the monsters in Act 1 easily, while I have to pop WotB 2 times on elites in Act 3 to take them down.
I just lack the DPS to pull off Act 3 fast enough, but that's because I'm melee and I can't focus as much on DPS as ranged classes.

[Lysah]

I think everything after Act 3 Siegebreaker is good, fast XP.

It's just a shame though that melee classes can't kill as fast as ranged. This new XP system kinda makes it a big deal.

Barbarians are currently swarming the lists for highest paragon level...it's really all about gear and not class.

[DisposableHero]

Barbarians are currently swarming the lists for highest paragon level...it's really all about gear and not class.

Wouldn't this suggest the opposite?

[Lysah]

Wouldn't this suggest the opposite?

It would if there were nothing except barbs at the top. All classes are represented - at worst, a higher volume of a particular class merely suggests that they have an easier time acquiring their gear. I believe this to be true for barbarians, as even garbage DH gear tends to be worth tens of millions anymore. The curse of being the "OMFG SO OP" class?

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

It would if there were nothing except barbs at the top. All classes are represented - at worst, a higher volume of a particular class merely suggests that they have an easier time acquiring their gear. I believe this to be true for barbarians, as even garbage DH gear tends to be worth tens of millions anymore. The curse of being the "OMFG SO OP" class?

You can get acceptable WW barb gear for about a million total nowadays. I think my gear is pretty ok and I haven't spend more than 3 million on it. However, to make a noticeable improvement I would need to spend that much on each upgraded item :/ You just need to make concessions on the stats that are on the items, going for 50 RA instead of 60 RA can save you 20%.

my barb's profile

Act II is easily farmable, Act III is doable, but probably not going to be profitable if I'm only looking for gold and assuming I don't get any useful item drops.

[Resentful]

Barbarians are currently swarming the lists for highest paragon level...it's really all about gear and not class.

Yawn It's the spec, They can run at 100% speed forever due to infinite sprint hence how they can clear the fastest because of it. Hell even faster then me I can't exactly spam my speed running thing

I should of made a WW barb :3

[Lysah]

Yawn It's the spec, They can run at 100% speed forever due to infinite sprint hence how they can clear the fastest because of it. Hell even faster then me I can't exactly spam my speed running thing

I should of made a WW barb :3

Other classes are still competing, so that's still too simple an answer for me.

[Redblade]

Dunno about best but I run, keep all 3 levels, jump to kill Siegebreaker and the elite pack there and then progress naturally to Azmodan.

[Riptide]

Barbarians are currently swarming the lists for highest paragon level...it's really all about gear and not class.

You're wrong, barbarian are easily the fastest leveler, simply because they kill while they run. They also run faster than everyone else on top of having leap.

There is more than a 5 level difference between first and second. There isn't a single monk in the top ten anymore and a single WD. They definitely require A LOT more gear than any other class BECAUSE OF THE CLASS. See how that works? It's worth noting that the WD wasn't even in the top 20 and is now top 5. While 4 monks that were dropped down.


The monk that is top 20 has over 100k dps unbuffed. How many monks do you know that have more than 60k? Clearly, it's because his gear isn't good enough that he isn't top 5. Meanwhile the barb that is #1 isn't even in the top 1500 for EHP or DPS. It's more like 30000 and 1800. Clearly he has the best gear!!!!!!!

Dunno about best but I run, keep all 3 levels, jump to kill Siegebreaker and the elite pack there and then progress naturally to Azmodan.

This is what I do.

[Lysah]

unnecessary anger

Again, it is easier for barbarians to gear up than other classes. What a barbarian can do with 30k DPS it takes another class 80k DPS to do, you can call that a class issue, and that's a fine opinion. The fact remains that it's a lot easier for the ranged classes to get absurd DPS and still survive. Stop pretending like there is only one variable here and every barb in the game can just sprint around and clear act 3 without swinging his weapon.

Lastly, as a side comment, Blizzard didn't incorporate ladders for a reason. Paragon isn't meant to be a competition, so don't expect any sort of "class balance" to result.

[Riptide]

Again, it is easier for barbarians to gear up than other classes. What a barbarian can do with 30k DPS it takes another class 80k DPS to do, you can call that a class issue, and that's a fine opinion. The fact remains that it's a lot easier for the ranged classes to get absurd DPS and still survive. Stop pretending like there is only one variable here and every barb in the game can just sprint around and clear act 3 without swinging his weapon.

Lastly, as a side comment, Blizzard didn't incorporate ladders for a reason. Paragon isn't meant to be a competition, so don't expect any sort of "class balance" to result.

Barbarians are currently swarming the lists for highest paragon level...it's really all about gear and not class.

You said it's more a gear issue than a class thing. Now you're talking about this being an opinion?

Simply put a Monk can't compete. Your whole point was brought up based on somebody bringing up a type of class being favored and now you're twisting your point.

I'm not pretending anything. I'm simply stating that barbs are hands down the fastest levelers especially when all else is equal. That makes it aclass issue and not a gear issue. If i put 2billion into a monk and 2billion into a barb the barb is going to kill faster. What part of that do you not get? Hell you can put "BiS" gear on the barb and "BiS" gear on the monk and the barb will still win. How is that an opinion?

Lastly, this isn't whether it's meant to be a competition or not. This is just stating a fact Barbs = fastest levelers. There's nothing more to it. But it's funny you brought that up now that it's clear you were wrong in your previous assessment of gear being the main factor, when the #1 leveler has shit gear.