Grail, Astreon's and Tyrael's left - Baal or Pindle?

Fabian and other guys, thanks for exhaustive answers.

The idea of changing between blizz/AT and lite/Pit sorcs seems great to me, I'd probably even choose blizz but I've spent so much time in At that I'm simply bored with it. Switching - most reasonable idea. Since u need 117fcr on lite and almost none (with entry to AT close to wp), I could go with much more mf on blizz than on lite. but the number of bosspacks is a different matter and it complicates the choice, though. switching seems ok.

Killing only bosspacks? it's a new idea for me, what if I miss some of them? how to spot a bosspack quickly (they usually have different color and sometimes aura, but not always)? Even though, I will try it. Off me goes ;)
 
:worship: All hail to Fabian the MF king!!!

Truly inspiring post, I have a bit of a question though and I apologise to OP if i derail this thread somewhat (congrats on the grail -2 btw, that is preety awesome :D )

Having rouglhy 70 items missing from my grail is it worth using a higher p/setting (3 or 5) in AT with blizz sorc for filling my grail gaps or like you say going p/1 and hitting bosses only? Due to the nature of my play style and blizzards effect i tend to take down a lot more than just the bosses/champs but is p/1 truly the way to go? XP is of no real importance to my AT runner to be honest.
 
^If you really really want Tyrael's, and don't care for exp or runes that much, never go above p1 I would say.


As for recognizing boss packs: Learn your map. Find one where the packs tend to be close together, close to the entrance,a nd include the chest area in your run since there is always a boss near there. W/ time you'll be able to tell if a pack is present, and if it isn't where it likely is going to be. Try a few different routes for a map you enjoy, and pick the most efficient of those.
 
Maybe i worded that wrong...

I know exactly where the bosspacks can spawn on my map and 50% of the time they can all spawn in 2 areas i.e 3 bosspacks together but due to their gangs there is a tonne of stuff on screen hence i kill alot more than just the bosses, if that makes sense? My map is awesome, 1 tele from wp to trap door, 3 teles then its either 1 or 2 bosspacks on a corner, if none are there i know they are either at a crossroads with another pack or are at the chest which is west directly below the entrance. If they are not there either i know they are at the chest with a guaranteed 2 packs so sometimes i can get 4 packs on one screen. the others are always paired up in a corner about 7 teles from the chest.
 
Twibz,

Well it's very tough to give a credible answer without knowing a lot more details. I don't know how many monsters you kill for instance, and it's pretty critical to get it roughly right if you want to draw accurate conclusions. If you kill 5.2 bosspacks per AT run (which I believe to be a roughly decent estimate from what I've read/talked to people/etc), and that each boss pack has 5 minions (dunno if this is right) and that you kill as many regular monsters as minions, and you do a p1 run in 50 seconds and carry 600 MF...... then you'd do better running at p3 as long as the runs are shorter than ~54.8 seconds. Running on p5 would be better as long as the runs are shorter than ~57.8 seconds. Running on p7 would be better as long as the runs are shorter than ~59.8 seconds.

Are these numbers meaningful for you? Well, likely, no. I have no idea how many minions and regular monsters you kill, nor how long your runs take (or how much MF you carry). The above example might give you a rough idea though.

Of course, if you read the above and conclude that p3 or p5 or p7 indeed is better than p1, also consider that it's possible you could do p1 runs where you kill fewer regular monsters, but in 44 seconds. Which would be pretty sweet!
 
Thanks for the response Fabian, yeah I guess i will have to try and get some meaningful figures going and then report back.

5.2 boss packs average? I'll run this myself but im sure its more 6 for me (i could be wrong as im at work just trying to recall an average run in my mind). Infact im sure ive had 7 boss/champ packs in a run sometimes... Oh and would you factor in a monster shrine at all? I get this roughly 1in20 runs.
 
dizelsky said:
Killing only bosspacks? it's a new idea for me, what if I miss some of them? how to spot a bosspack quickly (they usually have different color and sometimes aura, but not always)? Even though, I will try it. Off me goes ;)
Click to expand...

Well, if you miss them they won't drop Tyrael's :p

Spotting your boss packs shouldn't be too hard. As Kitteh said: color, speed, bolts, aura. That's a good start. If all else fails and you still doubt whether or not a pack is a boss pack, you can check with the mouse. However, after some runs you'll learn exactly where the boss packs usually spawn and will be able to find them without any effort at all.
 
Twibz,

I think literally everyone I've ever talked to is sure their AT boss average is over 6. Then I ask them to write down the number each run for 50 runs. Then they start doing full clears, visiting every corner of the map, taking 15 seconds extra per run, just to prove to themselves they're not crazy, and then they're at like 5.4 anyway. Then they get mad.

The above may be a slight exaggeration, but also not really. And yeah go ahead and count bosses generated by monster shrines.
 
Fabian said:
Twibz,

I think literally everyone I've ever talked to is sure their AT boss average is over 6. Then I ask them to write down the number each run for 50 runs. Then they start doing full clears, visiting every corner of the map, taking 15 seconds extra per run, just to prove to themselves they're not crazy, and then they're at like 5.4 anyway. Then they get mad.

The above may be a slight exaggeration, but also not really. And yeah go ahead and count bosses generated by monster shrines.
Click to expand...

I think basically what is clear is that i need to get some figures down and then report back with findings, my assumptions are weak without facts, but thank you very much for the feedback it is appreciated.
 
Last edited:
Yep, second Zod I've dropped in CS was from regular monster on players 8 :) I can't tell if this in AT was from regular or boss (players 5 anyway).
 
Another question.

Does it depend on map how many boss packs are there? I've been doing Ancient tunnels since yesterday and I wonder that if I changed the map, would it be higher/lower number of boss packs there? Or is it totally random? I've leraned the map already and I don't want to change it without reason, but I'm worried that sometimes there are only 4 bosspacks (I searched for it and most of sources give the 6-8 number of boss packs in AT).

P.S. I switched to AT running as you advised me and yesterday I found COA (unid) and Halaberds Reign there. quite nice. Players 1, 816mf :)
 
6-8 bosspacks in AT is BS. I'd say 4-6 are correct numbers. It's not really important how many bosspacks are there, but what is your sec/bosspack ratio. If you can do AT in 40 sec with 5 bosspacks on avg that's 8 sec/bosspack (pretty weak overall). What should be considered efficient running (in my book) is whatever can beat pindle berserker barb. Obviously pindle cannot drop every item, and one of those two you seek, but considering how easy is to make pindle berserker, and how hard he is to beat in seconds/bosspack ratio I think it's good place to start when evaluating your magicfinder char.

My pindle berserker, 7000 pindleruns sample, 15.676 sec avg, 752 MF on kill switch / 692 on hork switch (54% hork). I think we can almost rule difference in MF because of hard diminishing returns on this point. Suffice to say, probably improving your run times by 0.5 seconds will mean more then last 150MF or so.
So, with pindle having two drops instead of one as regular area 85 boss and 54% hork, I get 15.676 sec / 1.54 * 2 drops or [highlight]5.09 seconds per bosspacks.[/highlight] This is pretty hard to beat, but there are people with characters that can beat that in areas 85. You just need to get map with high number of bosspacks and learn to run it very effective. Map sums about 80% of your character (so reroll until you get good layout with high number of bosspacks), 15% is play technique and 5% is character gear, assuming you can cover basics (ie 3 part Tal's, Shako Occy, 65 fcr, survivability mass MF).

It's tall order to make character that can do it with such efficiency, but compared to casual MFers, pit berserkers can do it almost twice as effective. This sure matters a lot cause it would reduce your average playing time to find Tyrael's Might from 2000 hours to 1000 hours.
 
frozzzen pretty much has it right, although I'd disagree on a few of the details. I don't think "anything that doesn't beat frozzzen's pindlebarb is inefficient" is really fair; that's a pretty damn strong MF character. I also disagree pretty strongly with the 80/15/5 breakdown, but I mean, it's not like it really matters. Finding a good map is important, playing well is important, having good equipment is important. If you want to improve your MF efficiency, all three areas are worth focusing on.

Edit: I mean.. getting down to ~5 sec/boss pack for any non-Barb character is close to impossible. Summarily dismissing ~99.85% of all SPF MF characters ever made as being inefficient seems a bit over the top to me, although in some strict sense he's of course right that "there's always room for improvement". If so, I will throw out my Pitbarb and call frozzzen's characters inefficient, tyvm <3, but again I don't really see the point in that.
 
Frozzzen, dude, my Pindle barb is "crappy" efficient compared to yours with 5.27 seconds per bosspack. That insane criteria! Haha.

Perhaps it's better to compare non-barb Pindle runner with non-barb AT runner? Hork is mad skill.
 
Ofc, my char is *crap* comparing to your pit barb, if only because he cannot find Tyrael's Might.

And I wouldn't say inefficient MF chars, but rather non competitive. That's my self imposed rule for efficiency, and reason why I didn't go in pits last MFO. I couldn't come even remotely close to beating pindle barb with pit barb. Ofc, I don't mean to say that every character that cannot beat pindle zerker is strictly bad, but that char is really easy to make and play so it could be considered good starting point when evaluating your compettitiveness (what is that word I can't even...). And you don't have to compare it to my barb or Fabian's barb, just make one yourself.

That ofc means that non barb cannot be taken too seriously. And that's especially true when you have goal of finding Tyrael's Might; you will need thousands of hours to get it probably and every second you can shave will mean a lot in the end. I wouldn't advise going for random non barb MFer when your goal is so hard. You need every bit of help you can get.

As for 80/15/5 breakdown, I think it's not too wrong. Gear, like I said, as long as you can cover basics you will be good. You don't need 1.07 prismatic glacial of GL amulet for your blizzard sorc or 40 x 3/20/7 MF scs to be most effective. Law of diminishing returns applies here pretty nicely. Map and playing skills will mean a lot more. I mean, my AT blizzard sorc can't even touch Nagisa's even if I have better gear for her. Playing skill as to spot bosspacks, knowing your map inside out and ability to recognize items worth picking etc. It comes with practice. Map is most important because you cana have best character and best playing skills, but number of bosspacks and map layout will still be limiting factor to you. 80/15/5 might be overvaluing map, fine, but map > playing skills > gear for me.

As far as I don't like barbs, it would be silly to say that they aren't best. If I would want to get Tyrael's Might, I know that I'd waste 1000h with barb then 2000 with zon/necromancer. And if you don't aim for being best you will never be. That's why I think setting high goals for yourself is way to go.
 
That is definitely a good point. Barb is the way to go for max. efficiency, it's hard that anything come even close to that. I would always choose barb for quests like that even if it's not as efficient as Fabians, but close to that. Practice makes perfect, and it's not hard to learn to play with zerker. Any other character will hardly match that challenge, I know for myself that I can't beat my Pindle barb (I didn't play with pit barb much, but he was close to my Pindle barb on some randomly rolled, but relatively good map), not to mention anything else.
 
Next questions to come (inquisitiveness is my second name) :).

1. Do pack of champions count as boss pack? they seem to spawn sometimes instead of boss packs (same place).

2. Could you give me a perfect AT Blizz sorc build? (the one's u use frozzzen or other guys). I found sth like that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3zHcuxgVvQ
"Character used is a clvl 95 regular full-synergy Blizzard Sorceress wearing 658% mf and 105% fcr."
how can u reach sth similar? and does it mean my build with 816mf and 20fcr, 5.7k dmg sucks the big time?

Apart from that, 42 seconds is insane... when I reach 1:30 I'm happy as hell ;)
 
diz,

1. Champion packs count as boss packs, yes. They're more or less the same, as far as probability of finding an item goes. Close enough, anyway.

I'll let frozzzen or someone else suggest different "good" equipment setups.

frozzzen,

As you know our MF philosophies are more or less in line, so no need to derail this thread too much with nitpicking about small details :) I do think your comments are better suited for a thread with a different tone though; yes strictly speaking any non-Barb will be non-competitive according to your definition of it (since Barbs are too overpowered when it comes to MFing), but this thread isn't about a player who's in the top 0.5% of magic finders who wants to get to the top 0.02%, it's about someone who's happy as hell with 90 second AT runs. Starting out with a "so imagine you can only do 40 second AT runs lolol" type comment and going from there is probably better suited in a different thread. 40 second sorc AT runs are, like, really fast.

The above post also illustrates my point about how map finding being 80% is, at best, talking to the wrong crowd. "Going from doing 90 second runs on a 5.1 boss pack map to doing 90 second runs on a 5.4 boss pack map" is pretty much on a different order of magnitude than "going from doing 90 second runs on a 5.1 boss pack map to doing 52 (or indeed 40!) second runs on a 5.1 boss pack map". Sure if you're in that top 0.5% of players wanting to get to the top 0.02%, getting a great map is going to do a lot for your efficiency at that point, but only because "playing skills suited for MF efficiency" is already a given at that point.

What that % breakdown would be for relatively experienced MF players is kinda interesting to me too (I still disagree about 15/80/5 for sure), but let's save that discussion for a drunken IRC night or something :)

Finally, if you call a Pit Berserker "easy to play" you've been talking with Nagisa too much :) Either that, or you don't place enough importance on "playing skill" ;) (spoiler alert: it's both)
 
Log in to Reply / Create Site Account
Remove Ads - Go PurePremium

Latest posts

Back
Top