Renown does carry over I thought. They said if you found everything before the season started, you would have a lvl 1 character with 9 potions and 10 skill points to spend so you could start smashing the lvling really quickly. You don’t get that without renown to at least lvl three carrying over. I doubt you will get to spend paragon points in immediately though.
Not using hota. I’m using bash with twin maces, rend with a unique 2handed sword that has 5 lvls of rupture on it with a buff that explodes them for lots of damage and makes the blood pool do more dot. Challenging shout, rallying cry, wrath of the berserker and unbridled rage. I’m lvl 58 currently. Build feels powerful for lvling up. Gear currently compliments it well. I’ve upgraded everything. I’m assuming gear lvls don’t increase much beyond 700 until workd tier 4/lvl 70.