2019 Spring RFL Sign-up and Running Thread: 2nd Round

[PhineasB1]

Really interesting stuff on the 200 FCR sorcs @Gripphon and @ffs

I'm running with untwinked WW barb without Enigma so no major contributions to theory or knowledge But he's at the 9 hour mark, after being away for most of the first week and then focusing on 99er necro to 98 for part of the past weekend. I still think he may finish the set after all, with some solid chunks of time this weekend. But he also may come up a couple hours short, depending on work schedule next week with the potential for a couple long days.

But progress has been solid so far, with ~ 1 minute run average factoring in merc deaths, which are more often than ideal The lack of easy repositioning with teleport to get him away from PI spawns with might/fanatacism around are definitely a limitation. But he picked up a Kira's (70@ to boot) early on:
View attachment 13442
This beat out other options, I guess largely due to keeping him alive for most runs when convicted vs. dying almost immediately. Merc resurrections were less frequent after equipping it anyhow, with GBane the best armor option in his limited stash. And he found his second of these:
View attachment 13443
Other finds that remained in his stash (for now at least) were:

Shimmering Small Charm of Storms
Small Charm
Required Level: 37
Fingerprint: 0xa435ee5d
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Adds 1 - 27 Lightning Damage
All Resistances +4

Shimmering Small Charm of Shock
Small Charm
Required Level: 25
Fingerprint: 0x62b66bca
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Adds 1 - 3 Lightning Damage
All Resistances +3

Ocher Small Charm of Balance
Small Charm
Required Level: 29
Fingerprint: 0xec26d030
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+5% Faster Hit Recovery
Lightning Resist +7%

Ruby Jewel of Virility
Jewel
Required Level: 58
Fingerprint: 0xa1310
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
34% Enhanced Damage
+9 to Strength

Good luck to everyone else who's still running.

 

[Babyhell]

Less than 7 hours to go, should be done this week end with second set. Something happened last night I hadn't met for quite some time...nothing interesting out of two hours of Travi - but yes I check less horking uniques except for Bills - and an hour and a half of AT leveling on untwinked IpBanPrevales, getting closer to 89.

Strange night !

 

[ffs]

@art_vandelay Nice idea – cheesy AF but why not try.

I tried this briefly, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to work. Two problems: (1) If you teleport too far away, BW vanishes even before the 24s duration elapses. It seems that distance is around where the middle corridor of the wings are, but sometimes it disappeared even at a smaller distance. This point could be somewhat solved by circling in shorter distance, but it already reduces the "herdable" amount of ghosts. (2) Indeed ghosts will fly towards the BW once their AI is "activated". However, they stop moving towards it if you're too far away from them. As if they "disengage" again after being activated. This one I couldn't solve.

To be honest I'd be surprised if any build can challenge Javazon in AS. (Plus she can run it fast even with budget gear. Now I found she doesn't even need Infinity or Griffon's). But nothing is set in stone in D2, always worth it to test other approaches!

 

[art_vandelay]

@ffs Yeah I think it won't work consistently with sorceress, even though sometimes it can:

View attachment 13448

I teleported around after to see what was left and I barely found any ghosts. Sadly I couldn't replicate it!

Another thing of note is that if it works you will be alone on that tiny platform with about 100 monsters which is a little dicey to say the least. Can't use CL or you might kill stuff over the void and Lightning has to be placed carefully as well.

I think if this works it will be a Necro only thing because the repair costs on 13 charges of BP are like 450k Also I don't know if Attract is more consistent then BP/BW and doesn't despawn. I don't have a Necro at all right now so that will have to wait.

Anyway I'll try some regular runs with the lightning sorceress for now.

 

[Gripphon1]

Fireball sorc averages ~225 creeps per minute there based on a 10 minutes of video analysis. But video analysis is hard to do, sometimes it's hard to count ghosts and creeps precisely so there is some margin for error. And those 10 minutes could have been above average in density from what I know. Also, this is with ridiculous gear. Without it I believe number is 180+ to aim for.

 

[Ghonn]

May I ask why is AS a good place for round 3? Is there some monster type that is more likely to drop runes? Sorry if this was discussed earlier.

 

[Luhkoh]

May I ask why is AS a good place for round 3? Is there some monster type that is more likely to drop runes? Sorry if this was discussed earlier.

Ghosts/wraiths have approx a 3x greater chance to drop a rune. This was always known as a nice advantage in chaos sanctuary, but wasn't till last year's rfl that some people here figured out the huge number of ghosts in arcane sanctuary give perhaps the best yield for a round 3 area (with the big caveat they can't drop zod). The ghost to regular monster rune drop ratio changes with playersetting as well, which I gave the numbers for HERE.

 

[T72on1]

May I ask why is AS a good place for round 3? Is there some monster type that is more likely to drop runes? Sorry if this was discussed earlier.

Yes, ghost type monsters counts as 3.59 monsters in term of rune drops.

As for kills, I only counted monsters in one small sample [URL='https://www.purediablo.com/forums/threads/2018-spring-rfl-sign-up-and-running-thread-grande-finale.962056/page-10#post-8837187']here[/URL] and arrived at ~215 per minute. That included normal monsters and is counting ghosts as 3.59. Don't know how many of those were ghosts. Anyway the sample was very small, so definitely need to count more monsters this year – hope you will, too! ;)

Some people theorycrafted about the possibilities of AS for last year's RFL area round, and luckily it worked out too. The main downside is that Zod can't drop there, but other than that you should have, by far, the highest drop odds for HRs.

I ran the area myself last year after a couple of hours in CS and really liked it, even if I couldn't come close to the run times of the top runners. IIRC I got a Lo and Vex there in the end.

@art_vandelay I don't know which way to start runs is faster to be honest – difference is milliseconds either way. Don't think adding other wings is beneficial. The "straight path" wing is the most easily farmed one, and starting a new run is not any slower than going to other wings with less advantageous layout...

Could you refresh my memory? Isn't the routine in AS to only run the straight wing all the way around, but not entirely back to the WP (because you already have been in that first part from the WP to where it branches)? S&E, start a new game, go back to Act 1 through the NPC (can't remember his name) and take the WP in Act 1 to AS.

Btw, did you include the Summoner in your runs or not? I know I did last year, at least for the first part, then for the second part I didn't, and couldn't come to conclusive results which of the two was better.

O yes, could you share your gear? I haven't got a Griffon's yet, which is a major disadvantage, so I'll have to get creative with my gear anyway .

Fireball sorc averages ~225 creeps per minute there based on a 10 minutes of video analysis. But video analysis is hard to do, sometimes it's hard to count ghosts and creeps precisely so there is some margin for error. And those 10 minutes could have been above average in density from what I know. Also, this is with ridiculous gear. Without it I believe number is 180+ to aim for.

Funny you mention that, as I was thinking about the possibility of a Fire Sorc in that area. Could you share your gear, to see if I could explore that option as well?

@ffs and @Gripphon What run times do you have on average for those runs?

@Luhkoh To be precise, it wasn't so much that we didn't think about the big number of ghosts in AS vs CS, but more that everyone assumed it would be too tedious to not have them die over the voids. The result is the same of course: we (read: the clever theorycrafters among us) discovered something new .

 

[Ghonn]

Thanks a lot for clearing this up @Luhkoh and @T72on1

It certainly explains why "finger mages" pop up regularly in these discussions. Tal Rasha's tombs also contain ghosts but I guess they're too sparse and random. They're are a nice change of pace every now and then nevertheless. I think I popped a Jah from there last time I played in b.net.

 

[Gripphon1]

Funny you mention that, as I was thinking about the possibility of a Fire Sorc in that area. Could you share your gear, to see if I could explore that option as well?

Head: 3/20/2 5/-5 facets
Body: Fireball Ormus with facet
Weapon: 6os Military pick 30/-30 fire dmg/res
2/15 amulet
Phoenix Shield
Arach
Magefist
10/36 mpk ring
beta BKWB
triple res boots focus on lite res

9x fire skiller
This one can 2 shot fire immunes giving more casualties

However, any typical setup works as she can 1 shot ghosts, so some setup including regular items works fine as well, but she will kill less fire immunes obviously. Some random 3 os armor with -5 fire facets can improve killrate of her I think, especially used with Eschuta's with another facet and some hat with facet. Just to increase random casualties as she kills ghosts.

 

[Luhkoh]

@T72on1 Fair enough. It's tough for me to sort out what was new to the community when it was all new to me Also idk if it answers your question adequately, but that runefinding sheet I made has the option to toggle on and off summoner if you want to see the effect of including him. I can't imagine it's worth it unless it barely adds any time at all especially since he only drops up to Lo, but I could ofc be wrong, and inputting the runtimes in the sheet should help. And if anyone wants to see the verrrrry approximate "predicted rfl score", where nano and I came up with a few approximations that I thought were close enough to perhaps be useful, I could add it back into the sheet. That could tell you even better how little time he would need to take to make it worth including him.

Edit: @ffs this could potentially be a way to include the effect of hitting that pack outside the pit. Are you planning on messing with pits again this year? And if so is this approximation for an efficiency metric something you would like? @NanoMist and I tried a few approximation methods and compared them to the (much more reliable) simulations drmalawi did last year, and they all overestimated the predicted rfl score IIRC. But were close enough to perhaps be reasonable.

 

[ffs]

O yes, could you share your gear? I haven't got a Griffon's yet, which is a major disadvantage, so I'll have to get creative with my gear anyway .

Lot's of options. Here's my old post about AS Java setups and gameplay video from RFL 2018. Back then I had just done a major overhaul to my Javazon setup, using this gear:

Spoiler

Griffon's 'Cham'
2/20 amulet
3/20 gloves
HHG with 2x RBF and 1x IAS
Enigma
Titan's
2x FCR + double leech rings
Razor
Silkweave

CtA/35 Spirit

Might Merc with Infinity, ebug Fortitude, Andy's with IAS/FR

Build is all-out LF + synergies.

Result is 99 FCR on CtA switch, and 35 IAS high damage from faceted shield on Titan's switch. CNBF is necessary and provided via Cham'ed Griffon's, since the use of 2x FCR rings means no Raven.

For general purposes, this remains the best overall Java setup I've played (or seen, honestly – #patonmyback ). But when revisiting AS the other day I realized that such damage output was not necessary there. So this is the gear I plan to go with, assuming I do run AS in round 3:

Spoiler

Griffon's with IAS/MPK jewel
Enigma
2/20 amulet
3/20 gloves
35 Spirit (main switch)
Raven
SoJ
Titan's
Arachnid Mesh
Silkweave

Switch: CtA/any Spirit

Same Merc as above.

Max Pierce, otherwise same build.

In the Java setups post linked above, I noted the possibility of this, but didn't test it back then. The idea is that, as opposed to e.g. Cow running, in AS you switch super often between teleporting and throwing. So I figured it could be worth teleporting on main switch with 99 FCR (because switching weapons is a bit slower than switching skills). The difficulty is to include CNBF while staying at 99 FCR and 35 IAS, because shield must be Spirit and Griffon socket must be IAS for this. Best solution I found was to drop one LF synergy, max Pierce instead, and replace Razortail with Arach (providing the FCR required when not using 2x FCR rings). It works extremely well, initial runs were around ~55 seconds.

As for budget, without Griffon's I think 99 FCR impossible to do in a sensible way, but otherwise the same thing can be done with standard 68 FCR instead. Couple of budget suggestions:

Spoiler

Option 1 (Arach, Pierce skilled):
Titan's
Enigma
35 Spirit
3/20 or 2/20 IAS gloves
2/20 FCR circlet (IAS + ideally MPK)
+2/something amulet or HLW
Raven
SoJ
Silkweave
Arachnid Mesh

This does not require very good FCR gear either. I like the HLW option for 55 IAS in this case to improve DPS a little.

Option 2 (Full LF synergies + Razor + FCR gear):
Titan's
Enigma
35 Spirit
3/20 or 2/20 IAS gloves
2/20 FCR circlet (IAS + ideally MPK)
+2/FCR amulet*
FCR/ML ring*
Raven
Silkweave
Razortail

* If you can get the 13 FCR required from the amulet it is enough to hit 68 FCR, then SoJ can be used instead of FCR ring.

Insight Merc works fine, Infinity is only a small advantage.

If a player doesn't have a suitable 20 FCR circlet, another possibility is to mix the above approaches and use Arach + FCR jewelry (maxing Pierce again) e.g. with Shako or something.

Could you refresh my memory? Isn't the routine in AS to only run the straight wing all the way around, but not entirely back to the WP (because you already have been in that first part from the WP to where it branches)? S&E, start a new game, go back to Act 1 through the NPC (can't remember his name) and take the WP in Act 1 to AS.

You do go back almost all the way to the WP. Yes you can also go the Warriv -> A1 route, but again from what I've seen it is not faster.

Btw, did you include the Summoner in your runs or not? I know I did last year, at least for the first part, then for the second part I didn't, and couldn't come to conclusive results which of the two was better.

No, in fact I don't check the dead end whether or not the Summoner is there. Don't like the backtracking. Only thing I do is peak into the middle corridor (from bottom/right side to see drops better) and throw LF if ghosts are there.

 

[T72on1]

Ok thanks for all the input. Seems I'll have some testing to do before round 3, both with Fire Sorc and Javazon.

Initially the plan was to go full 20 hours with my Hammerdin in CS, but I keep getting attracted to AS. Maybe also because I haven't had any luck in CS in the previous tournaments I tried it on.

Btw, when talking about the Summoner, I meant the dead end of a branch on the whole of course. Summoner himself alone isn't worth it.

 

[Luhkoh]

@T72on1 ah ok I gotcha, that makes more sense. Summoner himself does improve Lo down drops by like 10% which is more significant than I would have guessed, but I would guess still isn't enough to consider.

 

[helvete1]

Cursing in the church here, but... How well would ditching the whole enigma work for LF zon, with vigor on switch?

Like super budget option - Insight merc, vigor switch, as much +skills as you can muster, then max pierce if arach is available, else use razor?

Could this be the way to go for new/restarted players, or even untwink zons?

 

[ffs]

2 hours to go with Barb. The trend continues – fewer qualifiers but better non-qualifiers than Sorc.

I should find the time tomorrow or Sunday to test things for round 3. Don't exactly feel like another Java set after R1, but at this point I expect AS to come out on top, so that's likely...

Don't think I'll take her to the Pit again as she is better off running AS. What I will test more is Pit Nova Sorc. I recently built one precisely for P7 Pit running, and at the very least she is fast.

I too had planned to go CS, meant to do more thorough clears with Hammerdin to also have chances at better S&Us. But even with Seal trick I tested it to be too far behind AS in RF efficiency. Regarding CS ghost/Vizier seal runs:

Fireball sorc averages ~225 creeps per minute there based on a 10 minutes of video analysis. But video analysis is hard to do, sometimes it's hard to count ghosts and creeps precisely so there is some margin for error. And those 10 minutes could have been above average in density from what I know. Also, this is with ridiculous gear. Without it I believe number is 180+ to aim for.

Can you record a couple of runs? I just looked for @NanoMist's numbers in the 2018 thread as he ran ghosts in CS before switching to AS. Here he mentioned ~145 kills per minute with Blizzy (with a similar amount in 2017), and he knows what he's doing. So I'm curious if FB Sorc can really be 55% more efficient than a well played Blizzy.

 

[CaseyJones]

@helvete, I hope to find out. Working on an untwinked zon right now for round 3. If I get her to trav before round 2 is over might farm a little there with plague before respecing.

I know that won't be efficient but she's the only char close right now :/

 

[T72on1]

Any character without teleport will get stuck in the AS quite fast me thinks.

 

[Nano]

Can you record a couple of runs? I just looked for @NanoMist's numbers in the 2018 thread as he ran ghosts in CS before switching to AS. Here he mentioned ~145 kills per minute with Blizzy (with a similar amount in 2017), and he knows what he's doing. So I'm curious if FB Sorc can really be 55% more efficient than a well played Blizzy.

I can believe FB Sorc being more efficient due to her 1-shot ability on small clusters. Ghosts in the AS also gather together nicely for FB.
My CS Blizz Sorc did not have DFathom (I still don't have one, it's 1 of 2 remaining grailers), so she cannot reach a damage range that can reliably 1-shot regular Storm Casters. According to Onderduiker's monster stats Excel file, Storm Casters have an HP range of 4945-6800. Assuming CM takes a P7 enemy CR down to -100%, Blizz would need to do at least 13600 damage to always 1-shot. My Blizz Sorc needed a 2nd Blizz hit or Ice Blasts to finish, and all those extra hits add up to lost time. Blizzard hit mechanics is spotty, especially against walls, so sometimes that 2nd hit doesn't come fast enough. It's possible I could have been better off doing P5 where only 10200 damage is needed.

I'm creating sorc who has 100% chance to 1 shot ghost in CS or 2 shot minions, but I'm not sure what resists are needed there. I would have to test are Hellmouth gloves enough to hold the fire damage off while fire resists isn't maxed, also not sure about other resists. I would use nearly maxed poison since I know it is annoying, but runs would be short and I don't know would it affect anything at all.

So much lack of knowledge, ISO CS masters to help so I don't have to test things. I'm usually just putting strong gear on with overall strong resists and go go, but this requires precision.

Looks like Gripp is trying to test CS to limits I couldn't reach. I went max fire resist and didn't care about the rest. Remaining resists were at least positive I think, but I was using Hoto. I also used Enigma and possibly Dracs for LPK, poison didn't bother me much with that setup. I can't say how annoying poison can be without LPK though.

 

[T72on1]

Pff, only 3 qualifiers in the last 3 hours, one single one in the last 4, on 23s avg runs . For the first time this and previous RFL, I'm now officially complaining (since we all know that helps ).

A bit more than 5 hours to go. Should be done on Monday partially, rest on Thursday.