Alkaizer Earns World First Paragon Level 100

Just over 2 short weeks after the Paragon System went live, a Barbarian player named Alkaizer on the US server has become the first to reach the summit of level 100. This is a feat many originally thought even the most hardcore would take a month or more to accomplish. Much like the Diablo II ladder resets of old, power gamers were quick out of the gate with their sights on being the first in the world to reach max level, but one eventually took off and never looked back, leading by a very significant margin most of the way.

On Alkaizer's stream, he showcased his quick paced farming which involved jumping through the most efficient Act III levels and then remaking the games. Using a powerful set of gear that included a 29% Leoric's Signet (on his follower), and the popular Double Tornado build, he powered through monsters, rarely stopping for anything, even ilvl63 loot.

The core of the DT build is to use Whirlwind with the Hurricane rune, Sprint with the Run like the Wind rune, Wrath of the Berserker with the Thrive on Chaos rune and Battle Rage with the Into the Fray rune. These are combined with 2 other filler skills, one to help you initially gain fury, such as Bash in Alkazier's case, and a skill for some additional damage and support, such as Rend with Ravage. Some Barbarians with survivability issues will opt to use War Cry with Impunity for the extra armor and resists. This build takes a bit of practice, but once you get it down it's easily one of the most powerful in the game. You keep Sprint and Battle Rage up constantly while Whirlwinding pretty much infinitely with all the rage you'll be getting from the Sprint rune and Battle Rage crits. The Thrive on Chaos rune for Wrath of the Bersker also lets you keep it up most of the time as well. The passives Weapons Master and Ruthless are used for straight DPS gains while he chose to use Boon of Bul-Kathos to reduce the cooldown of Wrath of the Berserker, while other Barb's may choose to use a more defensive passive such as Nerves of Steel.

A big congratulations goes out to Alkaizer, and we hope he enjoys some much needed rest! We've written up some quick tips for those who are looking at going the distance with their Paragon levels.

Bonus Experience
The first thing anyone serious about adding Paragon levels to their account should do is to pick up a Radiant Star Ruby to add to their helm socket for a 31% experience bonus. You can use a lesser gem if you're short on gold, but maximizing your bonus experience is key in reducing the time investment required. The only other significant bonus to your experience comes from Leoric's Signet, a level 14 legendary ring which adds 20-30% and can run you down hundreds of millions of gold depending on how good the roll is.

You should avoid gear with +experience per kill affixes since it only appears on sub-60 gear and chances are having a more powerful item in that slot will negate the effect due to the increased efficiency.

When you consider that you will natively have 75% bonus experience from 5 stacks of Nephalem valor, it goes without saying that a total of up to 136% bonus experience is very significant.

Gear Efficiency
It's a good idea to have a balanced mix core of DPS stats like your primary stat, crit chance/damage, attack speed and suvivability stats like vitality and all resist on your gear. If you're dying a lot it's just going to slow you down so you want as much uptime as possible and have enough DPS to make your uptime as efficient as possible. To get an idea of the pace Alkaizer was slaying demons at, according to DiabloProgress over a span of one day he recorded 78122 normal kills and 3231 elite kills. That's an average of 3255 normal kills and 134 elite kills per hour, which is pretty impressive.

Early on, you might want to add some magic find to your gear as the grind will become discouraging if you're not being rewarded with a good chance at loot along the way. Once your paragon levels start adding up, you can begin replacing magic find gear as your paragon and gear MF caps at 300% before Nepalem Valor.

Location, Location, Location!
Not every class has the advantage of a build like Double Tornado. Despite that, Act III is still a favorite for paragon levelers to farm experience. If you start the game at the final quest, you can backtrack and avoid a lot of unrewarding time-devouring story events.

Of course, you can choose to farm anywhere you want since all monsters give experience points, and I suggest you do mix it up so that the game doesn't lose its luster to you through repetitiveness.