Alright long post incoming (not uncommon with me
). I did 800 pitbarb runs and 2.5k AT sorc runs. Took just over 40 hours and I estimate just under 24k bosses killed. But, as I often like to do, I ran several different setups and builds during this time. Collecting data and switching stuff around keeps me interested for much longer than otherwise. So without further ado...
Pit Barb
Name: Tormund
Start Level: 95.0
End Level: 95.1
Pitzerker
I started the MFO running pitzerker. Was originally thinking I might run him the whole time. Merc was just might with treachery, andys with ias jewel, and thresher insight. Haven't gotten around to making ffs's zerker merc armor. On the barb himself, I ran the following setups for 120ish runs each:
- Conventional - cham shako, caster ammy, goldwrap, chancies, dual nagel, dual wiz swap - 776/656mf, 54% hork
- Conventional budget - ptopaz shako, caster ammy, trangs belt, ias/mf rare gloves, dual nagel, dual wiz swap - 761/641mf, 54% hork
- Highlords branch - cham shako, highlords, goldwrap, chancies, fcr/mf ring + nagel, wiz/branch swap - 728/608mf, 54% hork
- Highlords hoto (ffs's setup) - cham shako, highlords, arachs, chancies, dual nagel, wiz/hoto swap - 728/578mf, 55% hork
- IK helm - 2x ptopaz IK helm, caster ammy, trangs belt, ias/mf rare gloves, dual nagel, dual wiz swap - 775/656mf, 54% hork
- Easyzerker (no weapon swap with 105fcr) - cham shako, highlords, arachs, chancies, dual fcr rares, dual hoto swap for bo, grief and ist wiz on main swap - 513mf, 54% hork
My estimated efficiency with all these setups went from 2.4ish to 2.15ish as the tourney went on, mostly due to getting better at the map and runtimes decreasing. I think all of these setups are "close enough" to make virtually no difference for anyone who is not going fro some efficiency score in the Hall of records thread. I got my best efficiency (by a small margin) with the HLW/hoto (ffs) setup, and then tied it with my little easyzerker experiment. Runtimes on the same map slowly went from about 80s to about 70s on the pitzerker, and were around 66s on the easyzerker. Was very pleased with that improvement. I had a lot of trouble rolling him a decent map before mfo, and settled for this one with a bad shape when it seemed to be averaging >8 bosses. But after all this video, I have come to grips with the fact it's averaging more like 7.5 and should be rerolled asap. All efficiency numbers mentioned are assuming a 7.5 boss average. The bright side of that is that I think can improve on my efficiency as soon as I get a decent map on him.
Here are a few videos I took during the tourney of him. One is an official (mediocre) HoR entry that I need to get around to uploading. May get to it today
.
Barb Videos
Conventional gear (early MFO)
HLW/hoto (HoR entry)
Easyzerker
You will likely see more about the easyzerker from me in the future, as I REALLY enjoyed the character. I think he is much easier and nicer to play than conventional pitzerker, and I expect him to outperform singer for most everyone. And mayyyybe can compete with regular zerker depending on the individual (did for me, but almost definitely won't for people who are very very good at regular zerker like ffs and restte).
Singer
Before switching to sorc, I wanted to see how all this zerker data compared to a singer. So I respec'd the barb and did runs on the same map for comparison. I built the singer with with max howl and battlecry, but only 1 into taunt to put more points into BO. This left him with 4.8k hp and 750 warcry dmg. I tried 3 different setups on him. I don't use weapon swap on a singer (other than to cast BO), because I both don't want to and don't think its worth the time. I used cham andys, fort, ingisht GPA might merc. I personally think this is definitely the best merc setup for singer, and the extra dmg from fort more than outweighs any corpse shattering, which seems very very rare to me.
- Wizardspike, 6ist crystal sword, ptopaz shako, caster ammy, enigma, magefist, fcr/mf ring, nagel, arachs, war travs - 759mf, 54% hork
- Same as above, but replace 6ist CS with beast - 573mf, 54% hork
- Dual hoto - 595mf, 56% hork (and higher warcry dmg, the 750 mentioned above was for the wiz setups)
Did a much smaller amount of runs, but for what it's worth setup 2 was verrry slightly ahead for me, and setup 1 was very good too, and setup 3 was significantly worse than the other two. Was fun to see beast give significantly better runtimes. I was getting about 2.25 estimated adjeff with the singer using setups 1 and 2. This was after all the practice on my map, so i think it is most fair to compare this with ~2.15 I was getting on the hlw/hoto setup and on the easyzerker. So definitely worse than those, but not by much at all. Less than the 10% difference that ffs (who is much faster player than me) gets.
Lastly I did respec him at the end of the barb time and place only 1 point in BO, moving those points to taunt. This gave me 3.8k hp and 1k warcry dmg. For what it's worth, both seem extremely safe, but I experienced zero runtime difference with the extra warcry damage, so I think I'll recommend/use the tankier version with more in BO in the future.
@Pb_pal I'm very interested if you test any of this stuff in HC. Singers an interesting build! Unfortunately I didn't take any videos of him.
Tunnels Sorc
Name: Suriel
Start Level: 90.9
End Level: 94.0
Blizzard Sorc (blizz sorc)
Felt good to switch to blizzard sorc after all of that barb action. Blizz sorc is my favorite character to play even despite the very positive things I'm about to say about the next build I'll describe
. I have no fathom, and am running hoto plus 4 skillers in order to make up the dmg difference. This leaves me at 563mf. Shes running shako, 3piece tals, hoto, spirit, fcr/mf ring, nagel, war travs. And I keep one fhr/res sc in inventory to hit 60fhr, which may be a waste, but I like to have it. Merc is might with cham andys, fort, and gpa insight. I think her map is quite good. The layout is definitely great, and the density was ~6.2 last time I counted packs on there, but that was long ago and those things seem to get worse over time. I counted the bosses in the videos I took and got 5.8 average, I will assume 5.8 bosses avg for any efficiency numbers mentioned for her. Last time I ran this sorc was a handful of months ago on this same map, and I was averaging just over 40s runs. I was quite pleased this time around when the runs stabilized at about 36.6s. Big improvement. This puts her around 2.3 adjeff. Close ti my singer and an not too terribly far away from my zerker. Really likely better than the singer considering minion kills. I did try out running infinity merc on her for a bit, just to see. I adjusted my mf down to get ~1000 mana and then the runs were comfortable. But no better than usual with insight. So I'm content to stick with insight on her (big fan of ignoring mana burn).
Fireball/Blizzard Sorc (fizz sorc)
I feel like "blizzball" implies a blizzard main, or even an even distribution, but since this is a fireball main with a blizz backup, I started calling her fizz sorc
. Thanks
@art_vandelay for brainstorming with me on the name haha.
This is a build I've seen twitch streamer enpherno run a whole lot and he says he gets better runtimes with her than with regular blizz. So of course I had to try it. He plays with non FAM mods and has extra skills, which benefit this hybrid sorc greatly, so I wasn't sure how it would work out for me. With regard to running a lot of plus skills for the hybrid, I ran a full power setup (within reason). I figured it would be best for me to get a good baseline s/boss and then if I ever test lowerdmg and higher mf setups on her in the future, I will have something to compare to. So I ran shako, maras, hoto, enigma, spirit, chancies, fcr/mf ring, soj, arachs, travs. All mf charms in inventory. This gave 486mf, and is the same setup enpherno uses, other than me running an soj over a nagel. Merc was andys/fort/infinity. Build is 20 blizzard, 15 ice blast, 1 cold mastery, standard 1 point in warmth, static, and telekinesis (point in teleport is optional if running enigma, but then corpse recovery is annoying), optimize remaining points in fire tree for best fireball dmg. I was also casting BC for the extra skill, but it seems less reliable to get the cast off than BO for some reason, so I missed the cast many times, which is the sole reason I think NOT casting BC is better on her. My sorc was lvl 92 and later lvl 93 while running this. A higher level sorc would even get significantly better fireball dmg.
With this setup, my runtimes were ~34.5s, which is more than 2s faster than my times with blizzy, and slightly more efficient than her even after considering the mf decrease. Ofc an extra ~75mf on my blizzy if I had a fathom would close most of the gap, but this gave the fizz sorc an estimated adjeff of ~2.25. The backup blizz makes surprisingly short work of the invaders. Usually just blizz, static, static, static, blizz and dead. But I will ice blast at that point if the blizz shards were missing a lot. Either way huge success, and much like the easyzerker I mentioned above, you will probably hear more about the fizz sorc from me in the future. Big fan, and definitely solid, plus just something different to play in tunnels. Everyone likes fireball. Now I definitely doubt someone like albatross, who has great blizz gear AND is a master at multitasking during that blizz cooldown, will get as good efficiency with this character as he does with pure blizzard. But I bet it would at least be reasonably close!
Also, this is strictly a p1 character with infinity merc. If you say this build sucks and I figure out you weren't on p1 or weren't using infinity, you're dead to me
.
After all this hybrid sorc testing, I felt I had to test a pure fire sorc using phoenix and see how she compares.
Fire Sorc (phoenix sorc)
Ran shako, 2/19 craft ammy with res, hoto, enigma, phoenix, trangs gloves (wanted the cold res more than the fire skill), fcr/mf ring, arachs, nagel, and rare boots with a lot of res and 16mf. Was tough to get decent res on her, which I really desire in AT. But managed it with only sacrificing 1 mf breakpoint. She was running with 480mf. Same merc. Build was just 1 point wonders, max fireball, and the dump extra points in warmth. Also dumped some extra in static I think since I knew staticing the invaders would be crucial.
So she definitely works well. Noticeably faster on non-invaders, and single invader packs whose immunities were breakable were not significantly slower. I would just meteor, static static, static, spam fireball, and they die just fine. In fact I was getting even
faster runs at first with this build. Right at 34s. But eventually I came to realize the invaders definitely get annoying. Something like 20% of them will be unbreakable immune, and while the merc can make short work of them, clearing the minions still takes time, and you don't have cold skills slowing them in the meantime, so situations get dicey for safety. Then imagine that issue in situations where you have 2 invader packs on one screen, maybe throw a might or fana aura in there, and you can imagine how things would get annoying. Times eventually ended up at 34.8s. Though I only did 500 runs on this build, where I did 1k on the other two. Also while the quality of life with redemption aura is nice, you still can't ignore mana burn, and the higher mana pool on the fizz sorc mostly evened out the mana QoL. And those invader issues balance out any other QoL adavnatage in my opinion. Anyways very solid build and generally recommended, but I recommend the fizz moreso for sure. I think many more people should try out fizz.
Sorc Videos
Fizz sorc video
Phoenix sorc video