Force of habit I suppose, but every new D3 season I make a new character.  More specifically, I re-use an existing one by converting them to season mode.  Long ago I ran out of character slots… and I cannot recall the last time I played in non-seasonal mode.

I usually level 2-3 characters then move on.  Typically the first one is a monk, since they are quite effective at leveling and are very fast in terms of movement with starter 70 gear.  This time, I opted for Demon Hunter, since it’s brain dead easy.

The leveling portion is as simple as always.  Get a Leoric’s Crown, run Nether Rifts until 60, then run bounties.  Or, get powerleveled and hit 70 in 10 minutes.  Going through the process solo, you can see that Blizz has streamlined where possible.  And spending 2 hours or so, doing it alone, isn’t too bad.  By the time I hit 70, I had the Ring of Royal Grandeur (so 1 less item for a set bonus), Kunai’s Cube (the magic making box), and a enough Death’s Breath/gold to upgrade every crafter to max level.

A while back now, Blizz put in Headrig’s Gifts for completing 3 specific steps of a hero’s journey.  Each of those gifts gives 2 drops of a specific armor set, per class, per season.  For DH, this is Unhallowed Essence, which is primarily a Multishot build.  You buff this with a Yang’s Recurve Bow, and a Dead Man’s Shot quiver.

The “trick” here is to craft level 70 gear and clear out the first Gift task.  Very easy.  The 2nd one is a bit tougher, and you’ll need a decent weapon for the damage boost – doesn’t really matter what type.  With the gear from the 2nd Gift, the 3rd task should be doable for most classes.  Worst case, you run some public rifting groups to gear up a bit.

So I ended night 1 with a level 70 DH, and all 3 gift steps complete.  Night 2 was spent initially getting the gems I wanted from Greater Rifts and getting the good ones to level 25.  Each successful run gave +5 levels to a gem, and runs took 4 minutes on average.  It was a bit more than an hour to complete this step.

After that, it’s more about chain running public rift groups, at the highest comfortable level.  That started at T6, then T8, and a while at T10.  T10 was where the big difference was in gear drops.  It was raining legendaries/set pieces.  I easily swapped out my current set for “optimal gear”, found a really good Witching Hour belt (great for any DPS), some Nemesis Bracers (for extra elites at every shrine), a set of 2 rings that had crit%/critdamage + socket, and a near perfectly rolled amulet with dex/crit%/critdamage + socket.  Those last 3 pieces were a massive DPS boost.

What was left was a decent weapon.  No real luck in drops, so I went another route.  I crafted 20 bows and tried upgrading them with Kunai’s Cube.  Of the 20, I ended up with 3 Yang’s Recurve, 1 of which was Ancient (meaning higher stats).  It had generally good stats, but the damage was on the low side.  I enchanted a much higher damage range (from 1400 to 1950), put in a ramaladadingdong to get a socket on the weapon, and proceeded to face melt everything.

T13 (or GR60) is where I draw the finish line for any character.  My DH hit that goal in 2 nights.  At this point, there’s only marginal gains to be had on each piece of gear.  I am quite literally searching for perfection in order to progress.  Even Paragon levels are coming 10+ at a time when I close a GR, so I’m well ahead of that curve.

Did RNGsus gift me with good rolls on the 2nd night?  Darn right!  My Crusader from season 14 didn’t ever get past T10 due to bad luck.  But that’s it now.  The DH is, for my purposes, done.  And with that, I think so is Season 15.  No way I can replicate this luck again.