MF/RF Tournament - Sign-up and Running

[Pb_pal1]

Same video as I posted during the RFL, but I'll be running the same map so just pretend I'm a little bit better at playing it now.

 

[PhineasB1]

I will run with my untwinked poisonmancer, so there will be at least three of us! My recent update in the Untwinked 99er thread goes into more detail about set-up and testing, but short version is:

I've settled on 75 FCR setup with Shako/extra Nagelring (313% MF), but will switch up to the 125 FCR setup (224% MF) once he hits 96, which should be a little less than halfway into the 20-hour set. I'm hoping the full 20-hour set will see him past 96.25. The first half of level 95 also gave a preview of his score potential, with decent runes and S/Us in an estimated 10 hours. It should be a fun competition.

I also have a question based on the vids: @ffs appears to go straight amp, while @Pb_pal switches between lower resist early and amp once the first corpse becomes available. I'm actually just going straight lower resist to save key strokes (and make for more leisurely running) and on the assumption that it's not leaving too much damage on the table because Infinity + LR helps out the fire damage side of corpse explosion on all baddies in the Pit except carvers and Shamans. But I'd be curious to hear more from those number crunchers among the Forumites!

 

[ffs]

@PhineasB I stopped using LR altogether after @Gripphon noted that AD is stronger during last year's RFL. Makes total sense though. The first CE will almost always come from a Merc kill, so that will come much faster with AD. Then AD increases CE's physical damage much more than LR increases the fire portion. In particular vs Pit monsters, the increased physical damage from AD will always be fully utilized. On the other hand, in conjunction with Infinity, only a fraction of LR is utilized because lvl 12 Conviction already brings the (non-FI) enemies close to the -100 resist floor. Then vs broken Fire Immunes, LR only works at 20% effectiveness, same as Conviction, again AD has a much higher effect on the physical portion.

Generally the job of Poison Nova IMO is "only" to soften up mobs so that you can string together CEs immediately. It's a very important job for overall clear speed of course, but if you're lucky enough to have a Death's Web, that takes complete care of it on its own. That's also why I don't use facets either, I found they didn't speed up runs at all so I switched to MF in sockets.

There are situations where PN kills some Devilkins while Merc is hitting a high HP boss (e.g. Stone Skin) or something like that, and he won't deliver the first corpse despite AD in those situations. But those are exceptions, and even then I'm not sure LR would be any faster (CE is weaker not having cast AD at that point, and casting AD takes time again). Using only AD also saves 6 skill points which are very valuable IMO. If nothing else, in particular Golem Mastery helps the IG a lot, and personally I like revives also for comfortable running.

My 2 cents on Poison Necro.

 

[T72on1]

When I ran my poisonmancer for RFL round 1, I did Amp most of the times, sometimes LR after getting the first corpse if I wanted a bigger radius. But that didn't happen much.

 

[PhineasB1]

Interesting, because I tested out the two (wanting to have only one to cast so I didn't have to switch curses) early on and found LR stronger based on timed sessions with XP meter. But that was post-DWeb and before Pestilence had Infinity available. I guess I will do some re-testing once I pick him back up at the beginning of the set.

 

[T72on1]

Yes, to be clear: mine was with DWeb and Infinity.

 

[xxnothing]

After a REALLY long hiatus from D2, I'm considering dusting off my Tal's Blizz Sorc for this little event... Not sure if I can make the time commitment, but couldn't hurt to try!

 

[smloeffelholz]

I have settled on running a Blizzard Sorceress in Ancient Tunnels for the contest. She won't be the fastest, but she needs levels and it should be fun. I am planning on running at P3 to keep kill speed fast but increase rune chances. I still might change this based on her speed and survivability, since she will not be running with ideal gear.

Equipment setup:

Spoiler

Shako
Skullder's Ire
Hoto
Spirit Monarch
Arach
Magefist
War Traveler
Nagel x 2
Mara's Kaleidoscope

This will let her hit the 105% FCR breakpoint and still carry ~360% MF with charms.

 

[pharphis]

I have settled on running a Blizzard Sorceress in Ancient Tunnels for the contest. She won't be the fastest, but she needs levels and it should be fun. I am planning on running at P3 to keep kill speed fast but increase rune chances. I still might change this based on her speed and survivability, since she will not be running with ideal gear.

Equipment setup:

Spoiler

Shako
Skullder's Ire
Hoto
Spirit Monarch
Arach
Magefist
War Traveler
Nagel x 2
Mara's Kaleidoscope

This will let her hit the 105% FCR breakpoint and still carry ~360% MF with charms.

My kind of guy

 

[ffs]

@xxnothing Nice, which target are you thinking about running? Please do sign up by adding yourself in the table/category below! Also, who is going to give @Friiser some competition for Baal? Copied the table here for convenience as it was on the last page:


Category 1
Targets: Level 85 areas, Pindle+, Cow level
-------------------
ffs
PhineasB
Hutton
ioupainmax
NanoMist
RIP
CrustyRusty
smloeffelholz
pharphis
Pb_pal
Grape
mulligan
Shuffleblast
Locohead

-------------------
Category 2
Targets: Baal & waves
-------------------
Friiser



-------------------
Category 3
Target: Nihlathak
-------------------
Yng
T72on1

 

[Pb_pal1]

For what it's worth, I run LR->AD mostly out of habit and partly because I simply like it better. It takes a bit of getting used to, but once the muscle memory kicks in it's all routine.

As you can see in my video, the LR-pumped Novas will kill devilkins like butter, and will also semi-reliably kill off a few minions of the Lancer/Archer types. This obviously can help massively on getting quick CE chains, especially if there are Stone Skin bosses around or in largely packed rooms. It doesn't do much against skellies, but if you wanted to really min-max you could just skip LR for those guys and go straight to amp (though I prefer to use the same method at all times, makes the runs more relaxing).

I haven't done any hard numbers testing on efficiencies between the two styles, but when I first rolled him out in the Pit I tried both and got the sense that LR+Amp was faster for me specifically on /p8. I also have a high roll DWeb and Infinity, so there's that.

I wouldn't be surprised either way which style is faster with the actual numbers, but I like to always put the caveat out there that it's probably best to do whichever you enjoy/can do for extended times easily.

 

[ziambe]

This looks like the perfect opportunity to work on my Perfect Eth grail...

I also still need to achieve my annual goal of finding 3 Sacred Armors per year.

Will this be the year? Will the age old question "Is it possible to get a 2nd grail to -1 before finishing the first one?" finally be answered? -6 and counting...so only one way to find out!

I was a little confused about the rules though: Is it possible to run more than one category? How about 2 characters in the same category? I would like to start with 20 hours of Pitzerking. Then alternate between javabaaling and blizztunneling maybe 1-2 hours each per day. I only expect to finish the pit running but you never know...(I don't care about scores I just like the idea of racing against the clock).

Added to Category 1 for now!

Category 1
Targets: Level 85 areas, Pindle+, Cow level
-------------------
ffs
PhineasB
Hutton
ioupainmax
NanoMist
RIP
CrustyRusty
smloeffelholz
pharphis
Pb_pal
Grape
mulligan
Shuffleblast
Locohead
ziambe

-------------------
Category 2
Targets: Baal & waves
-------------------
Friiser
ziambe


-------------------
Category 3
Target: Nihlathak
-------------------
Yng
T72on1

 

[ffs]

@ziambe Cool, GL with the grail. Initially I thought about whether switching between categories could work, but it doesn't. At least I couldn't think of an adequate way. Each S&U drop would need to be scored based on where it was found. But then for example a Tyrael's Might from Nihlathak would already be impossible to beat by someone running L85 areas (even with five Tyrael's). Don't want something like that.

So no switching allowed during a set, but you can run multiple sets and switch after one is finished (or run simultaneously, but keeping track of separate timers and drops/scores).

So, still no one willing to join @Friiser for Baal runs?

 

[ziambe]

@ffs Thanks for clearing that up. Of course combining drops between categories would defeat the purpose of categories in the first place. I didn't mean that.

...you can run multiple sets and switch after one is finished (or run simultaneously, but keeping track of separate timers and drops/scores).

This is what I meant. I was just confused by the term 'sets'.

So I will go ahead and sign up for 'ole Baal too, but can't guarantee I will get a full 20 hours in on him...should i also do something to signify the possibility that i might run a 2nd category 1 too?

Also I would like to take the opportunity to invite all the runners to try my meta game while running:

TC 87 Bingo!

Guaranteed to increase your fun by a percentage equal to or greater than your MF

 

[darkstarhub]

Category 1
Targets: Level 85 areas, Pindle+, Cow level
-------------------
ffs
PhineasB
Hutton
ioupainmax
NanoMist
RIP
CrustyRusty
smloeffelholz
pharphis
Pb_pal
Grape
mulligan
Shuffleblast
Locohead
ziambe
darkstarhub

-------------------
Category 2
Targets: Baal & waves
-------------------
Friiser
ziambe


-------------------
Category 3
Target: Nihlathak
-------------------
Yng
T72on1

Baal does not like me when it comes to drops at all, and no Nihlathak just yet. Chaos Sanctuary with some AT/Pits mixed in sounds fun to me!!!

 

[ffs]

Very nice @darkstarhub!

should i also do something to signify the possibility that i might run a 2nd category 1 too?

No need!

So, kind of quiet around here, everybody ready to go tomorrow!?

 

[T72on1]

I'm not sure when I'll be able to start. Probably not until Monday or so, although I've said such nonsense in the past as well, usually ending up completely different . Quiet from my part at the moment, because I'm playing D3 and haven't touched D2 besides our weekly group game for a week or two now.

Btw, I'm wondering what the best strategy is for running Nihl. @Grape ran him during the area round of RFL and scored a good amount of HRs. Which is completely the opposite of my experience with him so far, after some 50 -60 hours with my 99er Sorc. He has been stingy as hell. Obviously rng is rng, but what would be the best way to approach this? Only Nihl's part of the map I guess, but probably kill almost evertyhing on and around his platform, not only Nihl and any casualties that happen to be there because of Meteor's area damage?

I'll also have to see if I can include a bit more MF without sacrificing my survivability too much. Tournaments are fun and everything, but dying at 98.5 isn't, so ...

 

[ffs]

IIRC Grape went for Nihl as usual, plus ghost type monsters on the way there. Honestly I think you’ve just been unlucky with runes there so far, so I’m sure plenty will drop in the next 20h!

I’ll probably start Saturday. Let’s go!

 

[ioupain]

So, kind of quiet around here, everybody ready to go tomorrow!?

Uhhh...a bit premature surely, it doesn't start until it ticks over to Saturday local time.

 

[smloeffelholz]

Very nice @darkstarhub!


No need!

So, kind of quiet around here, everybody ready to go tomorrow!?

I just got done play testing my AT blizz sorc. In ~2.5 hours she found BK sword, Trang's helm and belt, and a Nightwing's Veil. I feel like I need to stop before I burn up all the good luck on the map.

Edit: I couldn’t stop, and I just found an Astreon’s Iron Ward (+4 Combat Skills). I really need to give it a break.

Edit 2: I am having too much fun, and I can't control myself.

Spoiler