Why this season favors AoE and surge playstyles
Chaos Armor lets Uniques appear in new slots and Chaos Perks change how skills function — including swapping the roles of core and ultimate abilities in some cases. The seasonal design encourages experimentation and enables the creation of new high-throughput combinations. At the same time, the Infernal Hordes revamp (now including fleeting hordes) gives you compact, repeatable multi-wave fights that massively favor AoE output and fast clear builds — perfect for Blood Surge and minion hybrids.
Overall plan (short)
1. Level 1→60: Use a Blood Surge + Minions leveling build for fast AoE clears and steady resource loops.
2. Push/T1 farming: Keep Blood Surge while gearing and farming Torment I — it's still excellent early-game.
3. Endgame swap (when available): If you obtain the unique Alter the Balance (or similar Chaos unique that swaps ultimate/core roles), switch to a Shadow-Blight Soul Rift spam endgame build that abuses cores becoming ultimates (no cooldown) and ultimates becoming core skills (Essence cost). This transformation is a season-defining power shift.
Why start with Blood Surge?
Blood Surge remains a powerful leveling skill thanks to:
· Large, repeatable AoE damage and a reliable rotation.
· New minion quality/interaction improvements this season — minions are stronger and automatically re-summon on player resurrect, which improves survivability and clear speed.
· Season 10 also improves Blood Surge numbers (nova damage and enhancements to overwhelming blood stacking), and changes to enhanced/overwhelming mechanics that make reaching guaranteed Overpower stacks easier and faster. These tweaks keep Blood Surge competitive for the early ladder and T1.
Core leveling skill path (what to pick early)
· Open with Reap — take the enhanced node that grants attack speed (4s buff); use the basic to generate Essence between surges.
· Take Blood Surge and push it to the early breakpoints (4 ranks to reach next tree) and grab Enhanced → Paranormal (or the season-adjusted equivalent that generates stacks).
· Corpse Explosion / Creeping Tendrils — three points in corpse explosion help with corpse consumption and Essence generation.
· Iron Maiden → 1 point + enhanced: makes the curse generate resource cheaply (classic leveling trick).
· Corpse Centripetal / Tendrils — gap closer, pull + vulnerable generation helps AoE.
· Ultimates tree: put points into Soul Rift (enhance/supreme when you can), since this will be your later T1 / endgame pivot skill.
Resource & sustain: Essence generation
Season 10 makes Essence management a top priority. Things to use:
· Invigorating Attacks (generates Essence on basic hits) — use your basic purely to refill Essence.
· Gems / Runes: put Lum (resource restore) and GAR (crit stacking) into early gear; consider Seir/Xan variants as you find them.
· Potion perk — Crazy Brew: gives 100% resource cost reduction + attack/move speed for 4s — perfect for bursty surge windows.
Minions & mercenary choices
· Warriors (Book of the Dead): take upgrade 1 for cooldown reduction on corpse tendrils / soul rift; skeleton mages (upgrade 1) provide ranged cleave.
· Golem: skip on bar if necessary — blood golem for HP or bone golem for attack speed (the latter helps stack surges faster).
· Mercenary: Vana for massacre (move and attack speed) is a top leveling pick; Rah is better if you need tankiness.
Uniques & Chaos Perks — when to swap
· Crew's Embrace (early find) — grants ranks to Blood Surge and makes it consume corpses for AoE surges; an excellent early-to-mid Diablo 4 items.
· Alter the Balance (Chaos Unique) is the season's pivot: when you earn it (typically from the new Infernal Hordes boss rewards), core/ultimate roles flip — suddenly Soul Rift spam (no cooldown core → ultimate spam) becomes absurdly strong and is the catalyst for the Shadow-Blight endgame conversion. Expect to hold Blood Surge until you either find Alter the Balance or are ready to commit to the Shadow-Blight route.
Paragon & stat priorities (early)
· Aim for intelligence splits where simple +amp nodes give big early returns.
· First Paragon boards: Corporeal, Blood Begets Blood, and Amplify are excellent early choices to boost physical/blood damage and exploit the constant curse uptime.
Transition checklist: When to swap to Shadow-Blight Soul Rift
Swap when:
· You obtain Alter the Balance (or an equivalent Chaos unique that makes Soul Rift no cooldown)
· You've reached Torment I and have enough Paragon/gearing to survive hit-heavy bosses. Shadow-Blight excels at bossing and endgame content but requires the chaos perk environment to unlock its full potential.
Final thoughts
Season 10 rewards players who can adapt: Blood Surge is the fast, reliable leveling choice to melt through fleeting hordes and early Torment. Chaos Armor and the Alter-the-Balance style perks are the eventual game-changers — when you snag the right unique, don't be surprised if you flip over into a Shadow-Blight Soul Rift build that defines your endgame season. Play fast, farm smart, and keep an eye out for chaos uniques during Horde/Bartuc (special boss) runs.