Meet the Rune Finders – 2022 Spring RFL

[ffs]

Cham because I currently pick up a lot and those cold explosions otherwise slow me down too much.

Gripphon's Eye because it increases Static Field damage. Half the council is breakable LI and still has very high light res after Infinity. I once tried to theorycraft the right -ELR amount to maximize static damage. I concluded it's very hard if not impossible. Problem is you have to factor in random amounts of Blizzard shards hitting them, otherwise it would be easy. But definitely -ELR helps ofc, I just prefer the extra life/mana/BO and MF from Shako.

 

[Excalibur]

Cham seems like an overkill for that reason.
No wonder you really hate the loading times in D2R!

 

[ffs]

It gives me more than any other socketing and Cham'ed Shako is something many people have anyway (Pit Berserker etc.). Whenever I ran for runes only basically and just trying to kill the council ASAP, I do use faceted headpieces (be it Shako, NWV, or Griffon's). But as long as I run around to pick up all the juicy stuff in Travincal, not having CNBF would increase run times considerably.

 

[Gripphon]

@Excalibur
Griffon's for damage output of Static which is a significant increase overall. For MF focused build I would use Griffon's and 2 part Tal's set and aim for 350 MF total, makes sorc roughly ~1 second slower with significantly more MF to nail better at facets and other jewelry.

CBF mode is a great way to decrease running time when using sorceress exactly for reasons @ffs stated. I believe this idea came up in 2015 when I used in on my sorc to speed my running, but can't really say whether it was my idea or someone else suggested it before. This was the gear I used back then

1.07 Cham Shako
CoH
Amulet 2sorc/10fcr/17@/33FR
35 fcr Spirit
30% csd Fathom with 5/5 facet
Arachnid Mesh
Trang Claws gloves
dual beta BKWB
50 MF War Travelers

Also, just checked few stuff from history. This was @frozzzen at RFO 2015 just so everyone knows!

 

[Excalibur]

For the third Round, I have to admit that I didn't focus that much on runes but tried to combine it with some other stuff that I had to do.

I started with my Fire Sorcry at the new Act5 lvl 85 Areas but it seemed that they won't deliver anything soon.
I moved to some Nihlathak and Summoner runs for Keys. Most of my hours were spent in the AS and despite the very good density no rune dropped.
Lastly, I finished with a new unique Barb that I wanted to test at the Pits. I eventually found a Vex but that was out of the time limit.

Act5 Caves - 5 Hours
Arcane Sanctuary - 8 Hours
Nihlatank - 4 Hours
The Pit - 3 Hours

Below is my 200% FCR FireBall Sorceress. If I wasn't in dire need of keys, I would have finished my set with her since the farming was quite refreshing.

 

[PhineasB]

As mentioned in the results thread, I dusted off my twinked Hammerdin and ran CS for Round 3. He gained 4 levels over the 20 hours, from 92.1 to 96.1, reinforcing how solid CS is for leveling. And the backpack full of skillers made quite a difference compared to my untwinked 99er Pally

Pretty basic on the build and also pretty standard gear.

Vortex:
- 35@ HotO / 43@ Spirit ST
- CtA / Spirit
- Enigma BP
- Arachnid's
- Shako (PTopaz)
- Trang's gloves
- Hotspur
- 3 Combat Skills / 10 FCR amulet
- 2x BKWB
- Backback: 8 x Combat Skillers, mostly plain, but some +life or FHR; SCs with resists / vita and FHR

Merc:
- eth Insight
- eth CoH
- Andy's Vamp w 23 FR/stats rare jewel

LCS showed 11k hammer damage, and the following resists / innate stats

Fire: 272/232/172
Cold: 212/172/112
Lightning: 210/170/110
Poison: 182/142/82

MF: 170
GF: 0
FR/W: 48
FHR: 87
IAS: 0
FCR: 125
Block: 45 (75 with HS)