How to get started in a Diablo 3 season

Season 1 patch 2.1 : How to get started.

Disclaimer:  This post is about how to get started in a Diablo 3 season and not how to prepare yourself the days before. This post contain redundant and no-brainer information which may only serve to new people and/or as a reminder. New information, tips and edge cutting plays will be covered in later posts.

If you're reading this, maybe one week or even half an hour prior to the season start, well I have good news for you, 50% of the job is done already. After reading this, you will  know exactly how to make your gaming time as efficient as much to save 50% of it. For those who don't have the time to read it completely, the recap will come first. Don't get fooled, a few lines will not make you save time, it will only allow you to not make mistakes within the first 24 hours.

24 hour from start recap:

1. Level up the fastest way possible.
   In RoS patch 2.1, you definitely want to run bounties in Torment 6 with a group of 4. There's 3 quest that are better than the others because they allow you to complete them without killing any monster. Miser's will happen less than 1 out 15. It's not worth doing it. The best one is Matriarch bones and then there is a miner's gold. This should take you roughly 3 hours to reach level 70.  Removed ATM. will prob return to the game as a regular kill monster bounty.
2. Find any gear.
   Run bounties in normal with as much mobility item/skills as you can. Keep doing this until all your gear is yellow and 70 as minimum( beginners should keep running more until they get even better gear). A good weapon, or at least one with a socket is mandatory to go to the next step as well as at least 2 socketed jewelry. In the matter of 2 hours, you should reach 2-300k dps. 
3. Acquire legendary gems.
   Run T1 rifts until you get your first key of trial, next run do a Greater Rift. Close it at level 10 or 11. Level up any gem you just got. At this point, Greater rift> regular rift. Keep switching in between greater rifts and regular rift as fast as you collect the keys. Always end the run yourself and save time. Getting key of trials in T1 fast really depends on luck, same goes for the gems. It took me about 1 hour to get them all. It should take every one 1-2 hours. 
4. Farm gear. If you're ahead, don't be afraid to run solo. People hold on too long to their team most of the time. If you're behind try to stick and get carried. Get higher in torment rifting as long as your runs remain under 9 minutes. Always end your Greater rift yourself when you complete with less than 4 minute left.

Level up the fastest way possible. act 1, torment 6, bounties, group of 4.
Team captain will call when to leave game, when to click on activables and pauses if necessary. There's 2 things really important to keep in mind when leveling while doing bounties: everyone runs and leave the game asap. In the worst case you will all end up dying while 1 player reach the place. This player should die as close as possible to the quest and/or as far as possible of the monsters. If there's no monster, every one can revive in town and use the map(M) to click his icon. If there's some, everyone should die close to their own objectives, the team captain will call 3,2,1 revive and everyone will revive at the same time to click the objective. If you die again and more likely keep going to die. revive in town and remake. If you make it, die asap and revive to town. Leave game. You prefer dying to recalling since you save a few seconds. A few seconds might looks bah! but after 100 games its about 10 mins... if you're aiming at the conquest, you definitely want to die if there's the option of doing it. Kill stuff fast. use mobility skills.

Find any gear: bounties act 1, normal, group of 4, 2 hours.
Gear choice for:
weapon: main stat> Socket > %DMG > %AS (2)
jewelery: main stat> socket > CC/CD > CC/CD> Vit (3)
helm: main stat> socket> CC> Vit> all res> skill %DMG (3)
pants, chest armor: main stat> max socket> Vit> All res, skill %DMG (3)
gloves: main stat> CC> CD> VIT> %AS (3)
bracers: main stat> CC> Vit> %ele DMG (3)
Shoulders, belt: main stat> Vit> CDR/All res> CDR/All res> +skil %DMG (3)
Shield, quiver: main stat> Vit> CC> (3)

The most important things for running bounties efficiently (under 5 min each) even with no best in slot(Bis) gear is how you chose your skills. If you have to get ride of akarath champion because its cooldown is too long(I.e.), well, do it! I'll take the time to list all the skills you might want to use for every class as this is super important. the list will go from the fastest to the slowest according to my opinion. Feel free to correct me at this point since I didn't run enough run of every class. Demon hunter: , crusader, barbarian, wizard, witch doctor:  and the last monk: . If you have a Dh have him run the "big map" bounties which are usually those on the left(west) side of the map: Festering woods and are those known to have long running distance. The same goes for high density bounties. You want to have a monk or barb go and pull stuff in southern and northern those have more chances than the other maps to have 125 or even 150 mobs to kill. This is still an exemple. If you have a HOTA barb, maybe you want to send him solo Queen Aranea right away or king leoric as he's really efficient at killing bosses early on. The bounty for Queen aranea is still disturbing me as I don't know if it's better to send some one early or to wait as last and have every one searching for it.  Let's get back to the real talk, you want to keep running bounties until you think you can run T1 rifts. For that I suggest you to have 200-300K DPS with main stats on everything and good weapon obviously.


Farm better gear: Farming Technique n.1 in season.

Now, most of your gear is level 070, your weapon has high dps with a socket, you have average crit chance(30%) and crit hit damage(300%) for a total of 300k to 500k DPS. G
1- Go through as many T1 rift as fast as you can until you find your first key of trial.
2- End your first trial without killing anything. You may as well recall before the first wave starts. This way, you start the greater rift at level 1.
3- Do not finish the Greater rift before 4:30mins. The game will make you skip too many levels. When you spawn the Rift Guardian, recall instead, go farm some bounties. Make sure the game is on normal difficulty to go as fast as possible. Everything is a question of speed here.  Every member should be able to complete 1 bounty before the timer reaches 4:30. I'm assuming it's act 1 for Ring of Royal Grandeur (RoRG). This leaves you with 1 bounty to complete. In most cases it should be a boss, i.e. Queen Aranea or Butcher. Kill it after the RG and remake the game. I know quitting and joining often is a waste of time, but RoRG is more important.
4- Rinse and repeat step 3 until you can't complete the rift really fast (to do 2-4 bounties) anymore. It'll be around 10 on the first run. Once you're able to rift T3-T4 efficiently( 6 to 9 mins) move on to the next step.


Level up your legendary gems: Greater rifts, solo or group. 1-2hours,
Let me show you something quickly. I hope it will make things clear before I start to type a lot of theoretical stuff. At this exact moment:

Time> Legendary gems> gear. gear> Time.

In order to be as efficient as possible, you have to finish the greater rift fast. What does make you clear faster? Gear. How do you get good gear? You kill stuff? What make you kill stuff? Gear... Now you see where we're heading at. Sometimes gear is a matter of time, where as gems are reliable since you can get them all within a few runs.You want to make every single G rift run worth as much and to do so, you always want your gem on the highest level possible (I'll make a top 5 best legendary gem review post shortly). To do that, you want to start leveling them asap and you stop the G rift and you go back run another regular rift. Regular rift are better for gear and greater rift are better for gem leveling. You always want to finish your Greater rift as close to the first level you start it. This makes them so efficient, at some point, you'll realize how much more loot you'll get and gem levels. This is what pros do. They run rift at the highest difficulty they can achieve before 8-9 ish minutes and then do the greater rift from the key. They finish the trial to as close as possible to a level where you can level up your gem at 100%. Rinse and repeat.