1k Many Ways - Variety Grailing

~~~The Druid Saga: Hybrid Druid~~~​
Character: Fissure/Hurricane/Tornado
Area: Ancient Tunnels
Playersetting: 1
MF: 576
Runs: 500

Character Overview
I thought this was a cool idea. The problem with fissure druid is the invaders, and the problem with wind/hurricane is cold enchanted physical immunes, so I was like how about a hybrid? The fb/blizz sorc is my favorite AT runner and I love hybrid builds in general. So you cast fissure on them before you tele and nado like regular wind druid. On paper it looked pretty good when I ran some calcs. And it is! But it's probably not as good as the pure windy.

To build him, I maxed firestorm and fissure and then put the rest in the wind tree. Max hurricane and nado of course. But after that, it's a bit annoying. You need to put points into cyclone armor to get the hurricane duration up (but it doesn't increase the dmg), so upped that until hurricane had a 40s duration, and then I dumped the rest into twister.

Some disadvantages are that you can't cast fissure on the first pack from the global cooldown after casting hurricane, so when the first pack of the run is physical immune, it's slow. And ofc its hard to make sure that fissure hits the boss quickly. Felt good to play though.

I made a pretty comical mistake this set though. I did the first 250 (yes half the runs) with the wrong skill hotkey mapped and was using a reallllly weak twister instead of tornado. I can't believe it took me that long to notice, but eventually I noticed more than one nado was coming out at a time. But yeah the non maxed twisters were doing ~300 dmg each vs 2kish for nado. So... that was a nice 10% improvement on speed. In the efficiency data, I'll only use the second half of the set.

Sample Runs and Gameplay

Gear
Helm - Ist shako
Amulet - 2/10 druid with 19mf and 48 life
Weapon - Hoto
Body - Enigma
Shield - Spirit
Gloves - Chancies
Ring1 - Nagel
Ring2 - Res/mf rare
Belt - Arachs
Boots - Travs
Charms - Gheeds and mf
Swap - cta and spirit
Merc - Infinity, fort, andys cham

Max firestorm, fissure, tornado, and hurricane. Enough pts in cyclone armor to get 40s hurricane duration, and the rest in twister. 90-100 points in energy for mana upkeep.

Map
Same map as the previous set, a pretty good one! Right at 6 bosses avg.
F6pvbLL.png

Finds
Well let's say history did not repeat itself with the fire druid's luck. No rare s/us were found. "Best" finds were 39 chancies, an um rune, 2 blue unearthed wands, a blue sacred armor, a blue archon staff, a blue dimensional shard, and a rare dimensional shard :(.

Efficiency
For the second half of the set where I was using the correct skills, runtimes were 50.1s, and the boss average was 5.99, for an adjeff of 3.05. Using the old counting method, that's about 3.14. So close to sub 3. Ah well, I have reason to think I have a good chance of getting sub 3 with the pure windy, even though my original set with him back in 2020 was 3.18.

Status Table
Code: 
Start Date: 30-Mar-2020
                                                             Approx   Approx   9.3+ pts
Set   Char      Loc   Holy Grail   End Date    MF    Time    Bosses   Adjeff   MFO Items   Grailers
---   ------    ---   ----------   ---------   ---   -----   ------   ------   ---------   --------
1     blizzy    AT    -15 to -13    8-Apr-20   532   11.8h    6200     2.53      8         blkhnd key, exec justice
2     hdin      pit   -10 to -10    1-May-20   595   18.0h    8100     2.89      9         none
3     windy     AT     -8 to -7    28-May-20   488   14.3h    6000     3.18      3         bk ring
4     cenecro   pit    -7 to -5    24-Jun-20   656   16.4h    8000     2.62      8         dweb (1/44)!, griffons (10/19)!
5     trapsin   AT     -5 to -5    19-Jul-20   513   12.6h    5700     2.98      2         none
6     pitzerk   pit    -5 to -5    30-Aug-20   727   20.5h   11600     2.26     10         none
7     blizzy    AT     -5 to -4     2-Sep-20   563   10.2h    5800     2.31      5         veil of steel
8     fizz      AT     -4 to -4     5-Sep-20   486    9.5h    5800     2.23      2         none
9     fire      AT     -4 to -3    17-Sep-20   480   10.5h    6000     2.28      7         ravenlore (-14/16@)
10    singer    pit    -3 to -3     2-Dec-20   573   23.7h   12200     2.60      5         none
                                           Totals = 147.5h   75400
Code: 
Fewer runs per set in table below
                                                 Eff*     Old Est   Approx
Char      Loc   Runs   End Date    MF    Time    Bosses   Bosses*   Adjeff   Big Finds
-------   ---   ----   ---------   ---   -----   ------   -------   ------   ---------
fohdin    AT    500     5-Dec-20   462    8.1h    2900     2800      3.98    steelrend, azure, garg bite, cran bash, cham
javazon   Pit   500    31-Dec-20   402   10.4h    3900     3800      3.92    spir keep, gris shield, bkwb, eth boneflame
bombnec   AT    500    16-Feb-21   584    6.6h    3000     2900      2.95    steel pillar
litesrc   Pit   500    23-Jul-21   504    8.9h    3900     3800      3.14    3x grandfather, exec just, cran bash, knell, sur
nova      Pit   600    23-Sep-24   504   10.5h    4800     4700      3.01    shwdnc, stlplr, exjst, griff, grzcad, coa, drgsc, cham, ohm
fova      Pit   500    13-Oct-24   632    8.9h    4200     4100      2.78    gflame, stormspire, gargbite, death cleaver
ezzerk    Pit   500    30-Oct-24   513   10.4h    5900     5700      2.44    wndfrc, strmspr, gargbite, vex, spkpr, bonefl
fazon     AT    500    11-Nov-24   462    7.8h    3000     2900      3.67    gris shield, wisp
fissure   AT    500    18-Nov-24   513    7.8h    3000     2900      3.61    lash, gfather, nwv, shwdnc, sur
fsr/nado  AT    500    30-Nov-24   576    7.0h    3000     2900      3.14    none :(
                                Totals = 86.4h   37600

*Started counting bosses with new runcounter. An approximate conversion to the old system of estimated
bosses is included and is used to calculate adjeff, so adjeffs can be compared to the original table.
 
It is a nice char that hurricane/fissure dude. But why were you concerned about duration of hurricane? Just recast it?

Sorry to see this builds runs was pretty unfortunate when it comes to drops.

I have done that too, binding twisters instead of nado and cursing the game "druids suuuuuuuucks, nado is the worst skill in the game!!!" and later realizing char was casting twisters instead :) Not that tornado is a monster damage skill (physical damage that can not be upscaled in any way is kinda sucky)

Looking forward to the next one!
 
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@drmalawi the base duration with no cyclone armor was both too annoying and lost a lot of time due to the seconds between when huricane would go down and I would realize it. But if I was doing it again, i'd try getting like a ~24s hurricane and do a planned recast halfway through the run. However, the nonhybridized windy is just better (at least when you run him with infinity instead of the doom/insight combo I used back in the day). Almost finished with those runs.

Lol glad to hear I'm not the only one on those twisters. Just insult to injury that it was like 9 hard points in the skill with this build.
 
@drmalawi oh i said it in the writeup but forgot. You cant cast fissure for like 5-10s after hurricane. (I hope that was removed in D2R). So yeah getting hurricane's duration up near the full runtime is probably needed.
 
Luhkoh said:
@drmalawi oh i said it in the writeup but forgot. You cant cast fissure for like 5-10s after hurricane. (I hope that was removed in D2R). So yeah getting hurricane's duration up near the full runtime is probably needed.
Click to expand...
Ah yeah I did not connect, my bad I have not played pre D2R druid for several years :)

Yeah in D2R you can cast fissure right after hurricane and vice versa. However, I do not think there would be a "need" for this build in D2R since you can use sunder charm + phoenix + ravenlore/flickering flame for a pure fire build (as I do...)
 
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For whatever it's worth, I permanently kept Twister on the left button when I recently made my wind druid. I used hotkeys to swap the right button between Hurricane, Tornado, Cyclone Armor, Arctic Blast, and Teleport. The RMB casts almost all of his attacks, so I knew I wouldn't be accidentally casting Twisters when I didn't want to. LMB was just for run/walk, and if LMB ever produced a twister-trio instead, I knew that I had clicked on a monster that I hadn't yet noticed.

I've loved reading this thread as I've been building my own variety of grailers. Thanks so much for sharing your work and discoveries, Luhkoh!
 
~~~The Druid Saga: Windy~~~​
Character: Wind Druid
Area: Ancient Tunnels
Playersetting: 1
MF: 595
Runs: 500

Character Overview
This rounds out my little druid saga, and he still reigns supreme. I was thinking I might do a set of windy in the pits (just slap on reapers over infinity), but it was pretty slow after 20-30 test runs and I didn't enjoy it, so we'll end it here. It went well! I was able to get a much better adjeff than when I ran him back in the main 1kmw set. I think this is partially due to a better map, but is also due to me running an infinity merc rather than insight merc (I ran with doom runeword when i ran insight merc). Back in the day, I found that the mana issues slowed me down too much with an infinity merc, but now that I'm not too shy to put 100 points in energy, the mana issues went away and infinity merc became the clear favorite.

Oh another thing is what to do with your extra skill points. In that previous attempt, I dumped points in oak sage. I decided to be less conservative, and I didn't want to waste time casting oak sage, so at first, I did what gripphon did and maxed arctic blast to use on physical immunes. It's worth doing, but the damage is sooooo slow it makes very little difference. I then got the idea to burn another token and instead put points in firestorm. So i distributed them optimally between firestorm and fissure to give max firestorm dmg, and this is a major improvement... except when the first pack is physical immune. Then we have the same issue where you cant cast firestorm for 5s or so after casting hurricane, so you just end up sitting there. I still think the firestorm idea is better. It does about 3x dmg compared to arctic blast when considering the bugged arctic blast dmg, which I think is fixed in D2R. But it's not totally clear.

I also did test runs with shako and doom (513mf) and with nwv and doom (438mf), and surprisingly was getting almost the exact same adjeff with all 3 setups. However the numbers were very slightly better with shako/hoto (595mf), so I did most of the runs on that setup.

Sample Runs and Gameplay

Gear
Helm - Shako (ist)
Amulet - 2 druid, 7fcr, 48 life, 19mf caster amu
Weapon - Hoto
Body - Enigma
Shield - Spirit
Gloves - Chancies
Ring1 - Nagel
Ring2 - Nagel
Belt - Arachs
Boots - War travs
Charms - Gheeds and mf
Swap - Spirit/cta
Merc - Infinity, fort, andys

Max hurricane, nado, and all synergies. Put remaining points in firestorm and fissure such that you have about double the hard points in firestorm as fissure (but you should calc what's optimal). 100 points in energy to fix mana issues, strength and dex for gear, rest in vita.

Map
Same map. Had even slightly more bosses this set.
wHAyfj5.png

Finds
Swkcufq.jpeg

BsA38fg.jpeg
This was hilarious. I played a little on my birthday, and as I sat down to play, I texted my buddy @sir_cyclops "maybe I'll have some birthday luck" and literally 2nd run dropped the berthday ber. Now only a jah left to complete the runes in the flavie report. Aside from that, I was dangerously close to completing two 500 runs sets in a row with no good mf finds, but boneflame #13 dropped with like 25 runs remaining.

Efficiency
Average runtime was 47.0s, with 6.13 average packs, for an adjeff of 2.78 (~830 hours per tyraels). Using the old counting method, thats about 2.86. I'm pumped to get convincingly below 3 adjeff with a druid. A huge improvement from the 3.18 I did with him back in 2020.

Status Table
Code: 
Start Date: 30-Mar-2020
                                                             Approx   Approx   9.3+ pts
Set   Char      Loc   Holy Grail   End Date    MF    Time    Bosses   Adjeff   MFO Items   Grailers
---   ------    ---   ----------   ---------   ---   -----   ------   ------   ---------   --------
1     blizzy    AT    -15 to -13    8-Apr-20   532   11.8h    6200     2.53      8         blkhnd key, exec justice
2     hdin      pit   -10 to -10    1-May-20   595   18.0h    8100     2.89      9         none
3     windy     AT     -8 to -7    28-May-20   488   14.3h    6000     3.18      3         bk ring
4     cenecro   pit    -7 to -5    24-Jun-20   656   16.4h    8000     2.62      8         dweb (1/44)!, griffons (10/19)!
5     trapsin   AT     -5 to -5    19-Jul-20   513   12.6h    5700     2.98      2         none
6     pitzerk   pit    -5 to -5    30-Aug-20   727   20.5h   11600     2.26     10         none
7     blizzy    AT     -5 to -4     2-Sep-20   563   10.2h    5800     2.31      5         veil of steel
8     fizz      AT     -4 to -4     5-Sep-20   486    9.5h    5800     2.23      2         none
9     fire      AT     -4 to -3    17-Sep-20   480   10.5h    6000     2.28      7         ravenlore (-14/16@)
10    singer    pit    -3 to -3     2-Dec-20   573   23.7h   12200     2.60      5         none
                                           Totals = 147.5h   75400
Code: 
Fewer runs per set in table below
                                                 Eff*     Old Est   Approx
Char      Loc   Runs   End Date    MF    Time    Bosses   Bosses*   Adjeff   Big Finds
-------   ---   ----   ---------   ---   -----   ------   -------   ------   ---------
fohdin    AT    500     5-Dec-20   462    8.1h    2900     2800      3.98    steelrend, azure, garg bite, cran bash, cham
javazon   Pit   500    31-Dec-20   402   10.4h    3900     3800      3.92    spir keep, gris shield, bkwb, eth boneflame
bombnec   AT    500    16-Feb-21   584    6.6h    3000     2900      2.95    steel pillar
litesrc   Pit   500    23-Jul-21   504    8.9h    3900     3800      3.14    3x grandfather, exec just, cran bash, knell, sur
nova      Pit   600    23-Sep-24   504   10.5h    4800     4700      3.01    shwdnc, stlplr, exjst, griff, grzcad, coa, drgsc, cham, ohm
fova      Pit   500    13-Oct-24   632    8.9h    4200     4100      2.78    gflame, stormspire, gargbite, death cleaver
ezzerk    Pit   500    30-Oct-24   513   10.4h    5900     5700      2.44    wndfrc, strmspr, gargbite, vex, spkpr, bonefl
fazon     AT    500    11-Nov-24   462    7.8h    3000     2900      3.67    gris shield, wisp
fissure   AT    500    18-Nov-24   513    7.8h    3000     2900      3.61    lash, gfather, nwv, shwdnc, sur
fsr/nado  AT    500    30-Nov-24   576    7.0h    3000     2900      3.14    none :(
windy     AT    500    16-Dec-24   595    6.5h    3100     3000      2.86    boneflame, ber
                                Totals = 92.9h   40700

*Started counting bosses with new runcounter. An approximate conversion to the old system of estimated
bosses is included and is used to calculate adjeff, so adjeffs can be compared to the original table.
 
@drmalawi yeah he cant definitely be played hurricane only! I definitely recommend nwv and doom for that, and it still takes 3-4 pulses per pack. So not super fast, but definitely fun and lazy. Btw did they improve hurricane dmg on d2r? I saw sweet phil on youtube running hurricane only on p3 and was like 2 pulsing most packs.

As for nado on right click, no advantage. I just dont like using lmb more than i have to for some reason. I don't like working my pinky with shift (for zerker i do all 4 skills on rmb too). Which is funny because hdin is a favorite character of mine. I'm very sad they still don't allow lmb auras in d2r.
 
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