Boss Rush races for Season 9

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boof wrote:

2 hour long sigs, no thanks
My vote is for a Brutus rush sig


btw what IS the ranger strat now? Cleave or ST? Mule on cleave or no? I've messed around a bit but the fact that I don't actually remember what good times for any act or boss are anymore, and rage at desync makes me abandon practice runs pretty early.

Mule ST+Molten Strike

Poison Arrow+Fire Trap until Brutus, Brutus use Molten Strike with a 2h to kill

Level 9 switch to ST+Molten Strike because Jade Chopper is OP

In my test runs this method just felt the best.

ST still the best? You've got to be kidding me... gonna choke on my own yawn.


What are some of your typical good benchmark times for Brutus, Merveil, Vaal Ruins and Vaal... if you can remember and don't mind sharing.
I seem to remember a 25 min Merveil was pretty good, but with all the fixed seeds we've had, and basically sitting out a season, I'm not sure what's good anymore, and as I mentioned I don't have it in me to do comparative practice runs any more.

I would love love LOVE to see a Dominus rush/progression format.

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TheuberClips wrote:

Agreed. I know that there is potential for Dominus to even be cut down to under 2 hours for record for most classes.

I was thinking about the same thing the other day. Did a practice run as Templar and killed Dominus in 1:57. Then with a little more practice and a better approach (and some seriously luck in act3) I netted a 1:48 kill on Witch. I haven't tried any other classes yet.

One huge point though: Strongboxes made the runs a lot easier than I anticipated. It feels like its a lot easier to avoid bad luck when you can get several Scraps/Whetstones from boxes. Also it felt like boxes had a nice chance to drop magic/rares which I could vendor for some much needed shards. Heck just being able to kill an extra 3 packs of monsters saves time too. Furthermore, Chemist boxes that drop Quicksilvers...

So yes, sub 2 hour runs should be possible if we get those types of races. Fixed seed would help a lot too -- It feels like there are so many places to get lost in Act3 (specially Solaris)

Patch 1.2.4 on Tuesday, prior to race season starting weekend of 25th:

Added support for a new type of race that scores players on how long it took them to complete an objective.

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boof wrote:

ST still the best? You've got to be kidding me... gonna choke on my own yawn.


What are some of your typical good benchmark times for Brutus, Merveil, Vaal Ruins and Vaal... if you can remember and don't mind sharing.
I seem to remember a 25 min Merveil was pretty good, but with all the fixed seeds we've had, and basically sitting out a season, I'm not sure what's good anymore, and as I mentioned I don't have it in me to do comparative practice runs any more.

You can nerf ST a couple % here and a couple % there. As long as there's IPD recipes in the game it's not really going to matter. Cleave would still need twice the upgrades, and more reliant on getting extra movespeed to keep up with the killspeed while running. I'd also argue that you need the lvl 11 boarding axe + the lvl 16 axes to oneshot whites/2shot blues in yologear, while ST can if you have the proper attributes just use any 2hander. I've done IPD recipe on the lvl 9 2hand staff as scion before, and it's honestly not that big of a difference.

I have pretty much no experience at all with firetrap/poison arrow, but watching little bit of uber's stream playing it I honestly didn't think it looked all that good. It clearly works, but a lot of stuff "works".
And 25 min merveil is still good, whether it's fixed or not.

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ZoRoXo wrote:

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boof wrote:

ST still the best? You've got to be kidding me... gonna choke on my own yawn.


What are some of your typical good benchmark times for Brutus, Merveil, Vaal Ruins and Vaal... if you can remember and don't mind sharing.
I seem to remember a 25 min Merveil was pretty good, but with all the fixed seeds we've had, and basically sitting out a season, I'm not sure what's good anymore, and as I mentioned I don't have it in me to do comparative practice runs any more.

You can nerf ST a couple % here and a couple % there. As long as there's IPD recipes in the game it's not really going to matter. Cleave would still need twice the upgrades, and more reliant on getting extra movespeed to keep up with the killspeed while running. I'd also argue that you need the lvl 11 boarding axe + the lvl 16 axes to oneshot whites/2shot blues in yologear, while ST can if you have the proper attributes just use any 2hander. I've done IPD recipe on the lvl 9 2hand staff as scion before, and it's honestly not that big of a difference.

I have pretty much no experience at all with firetrap/poison arrow, but watching little bit of uber's stream playing it I honestly didn't think it looked all that good. It clearly works, but a lot of stuff "works".
And 25 min merveil is still good, whether it's fixed or not.

Yeah but it wasn't just the ST that got hit by a few %. The key cluster of nodes (wrecking ball) got moved further out. You now get wrecking ball at level 23. The new quickstep nodes are really nice, but I assumed between the small ST nerf and late damage nodes, the damage would suffer too much. I guess ipd recipe is too good.

I've done a few act 1 and early act 2 cleave runs, and with one ipd boarding axe and a white weapon in off hand, I was 1-shotting all the way up to Sins with an unsupported cleave. Also as you keep racking up those attack speed nodes, your whirling blades is getting faster. I thought it'd at least be competitive with ST at this point, which is why I asked for some time benchmarks to compare. I'm guessing though even if you could get to act3 at a competitive time, you'd be outfarmed in docks by ST. On another hand, if progession is competitive with ST, it might be a better option for the new boss races...

Poison Arrow Fire Trap works on white mobs, but its too slow to kill blues effectively. It's good enough until about level 9 because you can kite and do damage at the same time. It definitely is terrible once you hit Coves.

You'd probably be fine just going Fire Trap, Spectral Throw, Molten Strike and eventually getting rid of Fire Trap when you have LMP. No Poison Arrow necessary.

Also, spectral throw is so meh with 1 handers.

Regardless, I don't think Cleave does enough AoE in comparison to the skills we have today to really be effective, at least on Ranger. Sure, it one shots. But your AoE isn't big enough, at least on Ranger. Or maybe I just suck with Cleave.

Molten Strike is also just insane single target with a 2 hander on bosses.

Brutal Blade is actually potentially better for the longer races, especially for Ranger to Piety/Dominus due to the crazy amount of attack speed and you get Leap Slam from Crematorium (this was actually going to be my Season 8 strat later on, but I missed every race after hitting 1k). However, I personally like the idea of Quickstep -> Hatchet Master or Wrecking Ball. Quickstep is so much movement speed for Act 2.

But yeah, with the IPD recipe, Spectral Throw isn't that nerfed early on. Blue rustic jade chopper will carry you for a long time, then just blue rustic poleaxe to rare rustic double axe.

Also, on the note of bow builds - Rain of Arrows costs too much mana to be considered and the single target options are meh. Most of the time you'll be looking for that bow upgrade for ages. Ice Shot doesn't cover enough area for my liking, but in a party race it has potential to overtake Lightning Arrow for best bow skill in party. Poison Arrow sucks in coves.

As for my benchmarks for Brutus, Merveil, Vaal Ruins, and Vaal, I'll have to check again. I'm not at home right now, so I can't access my splits. And I'm pretty sure the Vaal times can be improved since I was using the Templar Searing Bond strat in them, if I'm not mistaken.

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Throzz wrote:

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TheuberClips wrote:

Spoiler

Agreed. I know that there is potential for Dominus to even be cut down to under 2 hours for record for most classes.

I was thinking about the same thing the other day. Did a practice run as Templar and killed Dominus in 1:57. Then with a little more practice and a better approach (and some seriously luck in act3) I netted a 1:48 kill on Witch. I haven't tried any other classes yet.

One huge point though: Strongboxes made the runs a lot easier than I anticipated. It feels like its a lot easier to avoid bad luck when you can get several Scraps/Whetstones from boxes. Also it felt like boxes had a nice chance to drop magic/rares which I could vendor for some much needed shards. Heck just being able to kill an extra 3 packs of monsters saves time too. Furthermore, Chemist boxes that drop Quicksilvers...

So yes, sub 2 hour runs should be possible if we get those types of races. Fixed seed would help a lot too -- It feels like there are so many places to get lost in Act3 (specially Solaris)

Practiced Shadow 1hr a ton leading up to these leagues. Easy 24s and some 25s dual trapping while ignoring Flameblast. Decided to test out trapper in a Dom rush scenario with Flameblast. Well under 2hrs in first two attempts with kills coming at level 30/31. First phase dies easily to Flameblast/FireTrap and second phase is easily killed melee. Assuming you have some cold res for totem ticks a you don't desync on a totem while eating lightning stream.

This was all done with Strongbox assistance as well. They make gearing up a crap ton easier and will have you always sitting on tons of wisdoms with "end game" gearing completed much earlier. In races like this, finding Goldrim would be hilarious.

I would love to see dom rush races just to see how low the times could be. Progression past docks in any form would be great.

Since we're still in speculation, how would people here score boss rushes for the "casual" racer? You can't make the league last forever, but you also don't want to keep the league excessively long (eg 4 hours) just so that people can kill Vaal.

I was actually really interested in this being a race, but the scoring for non-toptier racers actually sounds pretty hard if it's a single boss rush. Giving points for every boss kill in a time period would be the easiest solution in my opinion, but they were talking about scoring based off time in the announcements recently.