Race Ideas, Improvments, and Suggestions

The idea of a daily limit for signature races is to make it "fair" for working people and people with other commitments, who only have 1-4 hours of free time per day. I personally see no trouble with people no-lifing and doing 2-5 signature attempts per day (would probably do it myself too), because i believe one gets burned out really quickly racing in such a manner and will require a break from the game for some period of time.

Like the idea of getting corrupted 10% ms boots as a Hailrake quest reward. One prismatic socket would come in handy too.

I made a table that shows my opinion on corrupted zones (CZ):

As you can see from the table, only 35% of CZ have any effect on races and i personally find 4 of them (13%) hard to avoid. That's why i don't think they should be removed from the racing game: they don't spawn in every zone and even if they do spawn, i only have problems with some of them.
In my experience to avoid a CZ you need to know the possible layouts for a zone and how the zone is "constructed". Knowing the possible layouts helps you in identifying the general direction of where to go and the passages that are fake and can't lead to an exit. Zone construction is my understanding of how maps in PoE are generated (i have no idea if i'm correct or not). In my opinion maps are generated using different combination of clusters that form a map layout. A cluster can consist of some rooms, passages, notable backgrounds. If you break down the cluster into these simple elements, you would be able to notice when you see something strange in an area, something that didn't exist before the introduction of CZ. For example in Prison you can find the narrowest type of passage with no rooms to the sides of it. If this passage continues for more than 2 screens then it leads to a CZ. So in general i believe it's possible to avoid CZ if you encounter map elements that didn't exist before. Another way to skip a CZ is to understand the map size and be able to tell which passages to exit are fake (even if they follow the map layout) because it's too "early" for a map exit to spawn. Unfortunately that idea sometimes doesn't work as map sizes tend to differ, which is easily noticable in burst races.

I can go over the list and try to explain how to avoid them:
Lower Subm - If you know the 3 basic layouts, then you will rarely see a CZ.
Upper Subm - Again, if you know the general layout of the map and understand the map size you can skip most of the CZ.
Lower and Upper Prison - They only way i can tell if something leads to a CZ is if i see a map element that should not be there. Most of the times i still get lost and find the CZ. Should ask a better Prison runner than me.
Wrath and Anger - If you follow the water, you will skip most of the CZ.
Sins 2 - This one is really hard for me, have no idea how to identify it. Would like to hear from good Sins runner like Throzz :)
Vaal Ruins 1 - Knowledge of the layout will help in avoiding most of the CZ.
Vaal Ruins 2 - Know the layout here - avoid 95% of CZ.
Caverns 1 - This one is really hard for me, because the rule i had for this map doesn't seem to work anymore. Should ask Throzz again, because he practiced this one a lot.

I'm sorry i can't provide exact advice on how to avoid a CZ and end up saying "know the layout" a lot, but it is what it is. I can't describe a zone layout in one sentence :) It would require some sort of video guide and even then some of the pattern recognition that goes on during racing is almost subconscious.

I don't think dischargers are that dangerous (rather time consuming) in Endless Ledge if you have a single target attack and some room to kite. The hatred towards A3X monsters comes from them being elemental resistant and having annoying abilities (suppression, "bubble", arc, discharge and so on). I'm pretty sure we will never see any chests with predetermined items in EL, because it will violate the main principle of the race - chaos and randomness. Maybe that's a good thing.

I like your analogy with flameblast and finding an insane race unique, but i don't think that's true. Most of the time when people find such uniques their runs end up getting beaten in the end of the season. Janimauk found searing touch on witch - #3 S7. I got blood rage on marauder - #3 S7. I got 2 limbsplits on mara and ranger in different seasons and didn't make it into top 3. The only run that i remember to be "unbeatable" was when Hybris got Wideswing and blood rage in Season 4 or 5. Sure race changing uniques help a lot but in long signature races they don't guarantee a top 3 spot. Coming back to DC, you got a "unique" skill, not an item. A great unique item helps you go faster, be more efficient. A skill gem allows you to play in a different way. An overpowered one like flameblast made it practically impossible to beat your record with normal means. No item rng would allow someone to beat your record with the glacial cascade or fire trap or whatever the skill gem shadows were using. That's a problem and it happened in the original descent too, where people were hoping for cleave drop for shadow and ice nova drop for witch. It happened a couple of times and i believe some of the records in S3 were achieved with drop only gems too.

Hopefully shadows really get something good going on for them this time. A well deserved nerf to PA/FT turned them into the saddest racing class in this game. They had to copycat cleave (which worked out great due to the passive tree), spectral throw (didn't go so well) and now they are a poor man's caster class with no dominant skill, because for some reason they get flameblast one act later than everyone else.

Just count best results, no need for participation amount restriction.

I agree that most corrupted zones can be reasonably avoided. Furthermore, any instance that may spawn a long passageway to a dead-end (corrupted zone or not) can usually be bypassed by knowing possible layouts and identifying odd looking offshoots. The best example I can give is that the paths to corrupted zones in Climb and Prisoner's Gate are easy to avoid because the exit simply cannot be that way. Indoor and maze-like instances are similar, but more subtle. You just start to realize the exit can't be that way or this pathway looks out of place.

My thoughts on specific zones:

Lower Prison - Usually easy. Finding the WP can help point to the right direction. Normally you need to make a turn near the exit. If you keep following a hallway instead, that's often a bad idea.

Sins 2 - Used to be easy until they added a couple layouts toward the end of the season. Most of the time the path is like a diamond: <> You start at one point which splits into two. One of these paths will have the WP in the middle. Eventually those two paths meet up close to the exit. If there is a random path away from the diamond, that's a CZ.

Sins 3 - Also used to be easy until some recently added layouts. I still need to find a pattern for the new ones.

Caverns 1 - Sometimes you just have to guess here. A solid method is to intentionally skip more mobs than usual so if you do run into a dead-end than you have stuff to kill on the way back.

Why not remove corrupted zones in races altogether? Nobody liked them anyway.
Or at best only add them to open areas and not to dungeons.

And Sins 3 corrupted zone baahh, still have a Screenshot where I wasted like 8 minutes in Sins 3 because of a corrupted bullshit passage being bigger than the way to fidel.

I dont like them either. CZ only serves to improve maphackers results even more.

Buff whirling blades damage and remove flicker strike cd :). Still would require more skill than casting/ST/Leapslamming.

"

jstq wrote:

I dont like them either. CZ only serves to improve maphackers results even more.

Lets remove shrines while we're at it. Acceleration says hi.

"

Rithz wrote:

Buff whirling blades damage and remove flicker strike cd :). Still would require more skill than casting/ST/Leapslamming.

"

cwu wrote:

Party races

Would really love to see 2-4 player party races in addition to the normal, 6 player party races. Organizing a two player team is much more easier than getting five-six people on the same page. I believe something like a 1 hour two player party race would be a very interesting and highly competitive event.

I really like this idea. How about adding 2 man competetive party races? Now that would be a really fun metagame to learn. Smaller max party size would also bring a bigger crowd of players to these races adding more competition.

2-3 (maybe 4) player party races are untapped formats that would only serve to enhance the game. Side benefit is it would lead to more teams, and then more competition in full-party races.