Okay so ideally I need to get the expansion then trade for lvl 60 gear because my lvl 60 chars are naked. Then I can progress from 60-70 and find the good 70 gear

u dont need...

just create some yellow gear at smith
or buy some crap off the other npc's


there is not much in need to kill monsters and gain xp

haha well there's no materials or gold on the characters so it's literally absolute zero. Since the monsters are matched to the level regardless of difficulty setting there's nothing to really go through haha

I think I might need to lvl a new champion and then use the gold and gear from that to gear up my other toons

Find a pub game before buying the xpac (nobody is at level 60 in expansion). You only need like 4 rare items to drop in order to kill stuff on normal and get more.

Good advise I appreciate that.

The new season is also starting Friday @ 5pm Pacific. Everyone will be starting from scratch, so might be a good time to just get the xpac and do that instead.

It's same as D2 ladder reset, everyone starts season heroes and starts with no level, gear, or paragon. I think seasons are expansion only, but not 100% sure since they started doing them after the expansion was released.

Is there an option on the expansion to participate in the season or not? Or does it automatically reset your characters back to nothing to start over? Like on D2 there was nonladder and ladder.

Same as D2. When the season starts, you go to the character create screen, and there is a checkbox to make a seasonal hero. You aren't forced to play in the season if you don't want to.

When the season ends, all seasonal heros get converted to non season, and the contents of your seasonal stash get "mailed" to you (similar to when you bought an item from the auction house).

Ahh makes sense. So yeah maybe setting up the expansion and then going into a new season. That sounds like it'd be the easiest way. For the past few days that I have logged back into D3 I had just been playing as a hardcore barb having fun.

Do you know are Wizard's still OP in power? I was curious how the new Crusader was from an opinion perspective. I have lot's to catch up on.

In the expansion there are "greater rifts", which increase in difficulty every level you go up. There are leaderboards for solo on each character, and 2-4 player groups.

You can hit Shift + L in game to view them, and right click and "inspect hero details" to see the gear the character was wearing when they got the record. Since it doesn't look like there's any gameplay changes for season 8, the season 7 leaderboards should be able to tell you the best builds for each class, and the top group makeup for 2,3, or 4 player games.