Merits seem almost pointless when it takes me 5 minutes to kill ONE enemy. I may as well just stay in normal. Merits feel like a broken idea at the moment. I really think ultimate difficulty should scale better for characters under level 100. This would make the leveling process easier, only require a single run through the campaign, and we would still enjoy the challenge as it currently is once we reach level 100.
The point is now you can bypass 2 difficulties. The community has begged for this, this was the best method possible without having to rewrite the game from scratch
For me it is sufficient that I can skip Epic and go from Veteran to Legendary directly.
My pal went from being able to level 1-100 solo in 9 hours (normal to ult)
to 7 hours (elite to ult).
Ult start is meant to be a grueling challenge, not efficient. Also in multiplayer ultimate start is a lot easier. Otherwise try elite-start, which is the new efficient way. Cutting one difficulty out is a pretty non pointless thing if you ask me.
This. Also it is worth pointing out that even if you level an alt through the traditional normal>elite>ultimate using the Ultimate merit unlocks all rifts in normal and elite and gives the extra stat+attribute rewards from quests. Merits are far from pointless. If OP wants to make low level ultimate easier then spend an hour rifting around normal to acquire some fast devotion points, it makes a big difference.
Players can tweak the difficulty as they wish with devotion/gear preparation before moving to Ultimate whenever they want; everyone wins.
Merits are awesome, and I like the challenge of starting in ultimate. If it was just like normal, what would be the point?
Personally I love them as now I no longer need to play a very long tutorial called normal and elite difficulty.
Plus it makes the first 4 acts actually challenging again solo self found.
Great for mules, I can unlock all inventory bags and teleport to FG to trade ironbars and unlock bank slots easily.
If it takes you 5 minutes you are doing it wrong… also you level up so much faster that even if it took you 5 minutes, you’d still be at level 20 faster.
I managed level 56 in a little under 3 hours starting in ult on a Conjurer. Granted i was using lokar set + exp pot… But still
after playing grimarillion grimmest mod, ultimate at level 1 feels like a walk in the park.
Also, skip heroes and not-required bosses until your geared, when they take to long to kill
merits are ok.
for me was this:
level oathkeeper from the start with exp pot. Finished veteran normal with level 71 
buy merit
go elite
rush all the quest and get the devotion points easy cause you get all the rifts from the merit
start ultimate after. You can now skip the complett running in the elite difficulty
Merits are awesome.
Starting fresh on ultimate may not be efficient, but it is like a whole new game for me. I actually need to pay attention to gear early on or use components. Something I never really did before reaching ultimate around level 50 - 70.
I really enjoy the changes.
Completing just 1 ultimate quest on low levels gives you several levels worth of xp. It needs to be hard as fk