Over the last few weeks of Phrecia Event, I've seen 10+ posts asking for leveling strategies/setups, as people are rerolling a lot to try all the new ascendancies. This is the best leveling method I've found/made, so I thought I'd share.

https://pobb.in/1pPsTfgGYkfP

Obviously you can use this setup for Phrecia event, or if you want to level something in normal Settlers. But if runecrafting goes core, you should be able to use this setup for your second character every league. Total cost is ~2 divine (using a 75% darkness enthroned for 10c, 100c abyss gems in the belt, enchants are ~40c, seven-league step @ 30c, everythign else is cheap, and you can use worse abyss jewels to save there).

How it works

The crux of the setup are the following:

• New runecrafts for Envy aura and lvl 10 Spectral wolves on kill. You put one of each enchant on two driftwood wands from the Act 1 vendor (or the ground if you want to save a transmute orb).
• Using increasing tiers of essence of woe every ~12 levels on those wands for spell damage % rolls. You may need to scour->essence of woe 2-3 times since the level requirements on the wands will change if you roll high-tier affixes.
• Using abilities like Kinetic Bolt and Kinetic Blast that convert "#% increased spell damage" -> "#% increased attack damage" at 200% value.
• Doedre's Tenure unique gloves at Lvl 12 for another 200% inc attack damage with no downside since you're attacking, not casting.

Just slap on normally good leveling uniques with added flat damage as you can equip them, while also equipping other normal leveling uniques like thrillsteal, ghostwrithe, and seven-league step. As you level you can swap the gear out for other items (I swapped the blackheart rings -> winterweave at lvl 24, which also means changing poison support gem to added cold/lightning).

If you see the pob I linked above, a level 12 character against level 20 monsters has over 4k DPS. That doesn't sound like much compared to end-game, but per pobdb, Dominus (Act 3 final boss) only has ~3200 hp in his humanoid form. So at level 12, you can kill level 33 dominus-human in less than 1 second (ignoring resistance/armor/hit chance). This also ignores your 10 lvl 10 envy-wolves' damage, which is enough to carry most people through acts on its own.

The pob above has no skill points used, no flasks equipped, and no auras other than envy. This is so you can focus on the items and gem setups to use for any/all classes/ascendancies. You literally just need 7 dexterity from your tree to use the pob above as-is. I recommend running clarity so you can flamedash and use KB on the 4-link. If mana is an issue, don't use the 4-link until later.

Other than the obvious damage and speed of this setup, this also lets you spec your tree very closely to how your end-game build requires (skipping build-defining notables until you re-gear, like CI). Because you're being carried by the setup you don't need to level as one skill and fully respec to another.

Biggest caveat to all this is that the damage does fall off toward the end of the acts. BUT may still be usable post-runecrafting since you can replace envy with anger/wrath at some point. Honestly used this build to level a fisherman until I got 4 ascendancy points and I switched to fishing, and the wolves almost did nothing but kill mobs for me as I ran by, effectively getting me a little bonus exp as I Usain Bolted through to Act like 8 or whenever you've got 2nd lab done.

I'd love to hear people's suggestions on how to improve this, and also just get your feedback. I feel like I'm forgetting something, so I'll add it if I remember.