angeldesignpro
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Teleporting Trav Barb Tips & Tricks Thread
I've been running the trav with great success lately, and have been doing a lot to improve my 'technique' over the past few hundred runs. I've been shaving seconds off of my times, and figure some things I've learned may help others, while others may have tricks to help me.
Fabian nails all of the big things and a lot of the general theory (especially with respect to consistency) in his (award-winning!) guide here: http://www.purediablo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=757752
So this thread is about the fringe stuff, how to get your runs 5 seconds faster on average, or how to avoid having to S&E on that one particular boss pack. The reason I think this is critical is because once you put your head down and say "I want HRs, so I will do this run hundreds of times to get it right" that 5 seconds quickly turns into 500 and then 5,000 seconds.
Teleport:
Teleport is indispensable. There's no contest here, I've timed it. Even if you're only using one or two charges to jump into the room, it's just best. Sacrifice something and get it done. One item people don't mention as often is spellsteel - worked just fine for me before I had a tele amy or enigma.
Choosing your map:
There is usually advice about getting the entire council in one room, and that couldn't be more true. I've learned a few useful things that I wanted to pass on:
First, much like rack running, the council spawn is path-dependent. On my map if I take one route a few members spawn outside of the compelling orb room, and if I take the other they not only spawn all in the room they spawn in the same cluster. If you have to move around a lot to kill the last few council members, it's going to add up over hundreds of runs. So roll some different maps, and try some different paths. Getting the One Map to Rule Them All might be the best thing you can do for yourself over time.
Sifting through items:
This is annoying, especially if you're used to Mephisto / pindle type runs. Instead of a small fistfull of easily identifiable items, you get waves and waves of blue with some potions and alluring piles of 10K gold and a rare pair of boots that might just be high-res high MF and omg a blue monarch maybe it's a JMoD and you'll be rich and and and and.
What I do is run with /nopickup enabled, which helps avoid clutter. After killing the trav, I alt to look for big-ticket items, and pick up a few piles of gold to slightly reduce clutter. Then I hork everything, do a quick scan, walk out of the travincal with alt held down to observe the drops as I move, TP and exit. I've shaved a large amount of time off here by playing around with item levels, dropping runes and moving around, and seeing just when items really are invisible because they're off the screen.
Going from decent weapons to dual griefs probably won't save as much time in the aggregate as being disciplined with item searching and picking up. Always remember that runes will fall, and so anything you do that isn't killing the council and S&Eing afterward is going to come at the expense of runes found. If you have fun turning over every potentially valuable trinket, more power to you - but if your runs are 15% slower than they could be and all you have to show for it is a few thousand gold and a handful of perfect gems, ask yourself if you'd rather have 15% more HRs instead.
That last council member is not going to drop Ber
The number of HRs you get over time will depend on exactly one factor: the average number of council members you kill over time. If you kill all but one, and that one is PI, and you are chilled and amp'd and have a level one berserk... it's almost certainly more efficient to hork the other corpses and TP out of there. Same if one coucnil member randomly winds up outside the room (though that should be rare if you follow the above advice about picking your map). The temptation to be complete is huge, but it'll almost certainly damage your overall time. A fresh trav map for most barbs is 11 kills + 50-55% chance of hork per corpse, and takes (hopefully well) under 2 minutes. Really think about how much time it would add to nail the last council member. Maybe you're rocking a level 20 grief with extra off weapon IAS and your merc has already proc'd decrepify and it's worth it, but sometimes it's best to just keep moving.
Can Be Frozen
WW seems to pwn the council to pieces when I'm chilled and/or holy frosty. Unless it's all in my head, removing raven frost was the smartest thing I ever did.
Crushing Blow
Based on all of my damage calcs, a succesful crushing blow in the first few hits is always going to do more damage than my weapons could under ideal circumstances (merc decrep + critical hit + super high damage). I think P1 council members have like 80K base HP, which means a proc of crushing blow is goign to add 20K damage if you get it first hit, and a hefty amount any other hit. I think Goblin Toes, from a strictly mathematical point of view, are going to add WAY more damage than goreriders or war travs. I'm seriously considering ditching arreat's for the same reason.
Objects in motion
Of course, the caveat to all of the above: If anything done for efficiency makes the runs less fun, and makes you inclined to do fewer, that's a bad thing too. So if you want to pick up every gem and potion and clear the council every time, I promise I won't judge
H
After double clicking your barb, press 'H' to choose hell difficulty. Avoid accidentally clicking on nightmare, save a second.
FCR
I run with a suicide branch and lidless wall on switch. It's not ideal, but I tele quickly and hork quickly. Savings add up!
Warcry
I'm much stronger now than I was when I started, but warcry could be the ideal dump for extra skills. Especially if you don't care about having 55% hork chance, you can afford to dump some points here. If it's the first thing you do after you teleport into the council, you'll start the battle with a good amount more safety than usual.
Open questions:
+ Mana burn: I take pots and manage to get through, but this still hurts my run times. If I take a few hits and have to stop, potion, wait to recharge, and whirl again it's risky to characters and also slow. Any elegant solutions?
+R/W vs. WW: Is it worth loading up on R/W for waypoint running (in act 4 via TP) or is it best to stay slow for more whirlwind damage?
+Proper WW technique: I've worked some on the 'dance of death' (I was doing it all wrong to begin with) but sometimes I still wind up just whirling across the screen. I guess I need to get more disciplined on my pointer, I don't know if anybody has anything particular to add here...
I've been running the trav with great success lately, and have been doing a lot to improve my 'technique' over the past few hundred runs. I've been shaving seconds off of my times, and figure some things I've learned may help others, while others may have tricks to help me.
Fabian nails all of the big things and a lot of the general theory (especially with respect to consistency) in his (award-winning!) guide here: http://www.purediablo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=757752
So this thread is about the fringe stuff, how to get your runs 5 seconds faster on average, or how to avoid having to S&E on that one particular boss pack. The reason I think this is critical is because once you put your head down and say "I want HRs, so I will do this run hundreds of times to get it right" that 5 seconds quickly turns into 500 and then 5,000 seconds.
Teleport:
Teleport is indispensable. There's no contest here, I've timed it. Even if you're only using one or two charges to jump into the room, it's just best. Sacrifice something and get it done. One item people don't mention as often is spellsteel - worked just fine for me before I had a tele amy or enigma.
Choosing your map:
There is usually advice about getting the entire council in one room, and that couldn't be more true. I've learned a few useful things that I wanted to pass on:
First, much like rack running, the council spawn is path-dependent. On my map if I take one route a few members spawn outside of the compelling orb room, and if I take the other they not only spawn all in the room they spawn in the same cluster. If you have to move around a lot to kill the last few council members, it's going to add up over hundreds of runs. So roll some different maps, and try some different paths. Getting the One Map to Rule Them All might be the best thing you can do for yourself over time.
Sifting through items:
This is annoying, especially if you're used to Mephisto / pindle type runs. Instead of a small fistfull of easily identifiable items, you get waves and waves of blue with some potions and alluring piles of 10K gold and a rare pair of boots that might just be high-res high MF and omg a blue monarch maybe it's a JMoD and you'll be rich and and and and.
What I do is run with /nopickup enabled, which helps avoid clutter. After killing the trav, I alt to look for big-ticket items, and pick up a few piles of gold to slightly reduce clutter. Then I hork everything, do a quick scan, walk out of the travincal with alt held down to observe the drops as I move, TP and exit. I've shaved a large amount of time off here by playing around with item levels, dropping runes and moving around, and seeing just when items really are invisible because they're off the screen.
Going from decent weapons to dual griefs probably won't save as much time in the aggregate as being disciplined with item searching and picking up. Always remember that runes will fall, and so anything you do that isn't killing the council and S&Eing afterward is going to come at the expense of runes found. If you have fun turning over every potentially valuable trinket, more power to you - but if your runs are 15% slower than they could be and all you have to show for it is a few thousand gold and a handful of perfect gems, ask yourself if you'd rather have 15% more HRs instead.
That last council member is not going to drop Ber
The number of HRs you get over time will depend on exactly one factor: the average number of council members you kill over time. If you kill all but one, and that one is PI, and you are chilled and amp'd and have a level one berserk... it's almost certainly more efficient to hork the other corpses and TP out of there. Same if one coucnil member randomly winds up outside the room (though that should be rare if you follow the above advice about picking your map). The temptation to be complete is huge, but it'll almost certainly damage your overall time. A fresh trav map for most barbs is 11 kills + 50-55% chance of hork per corpse, and takes (hopefully well) under 2 minutes. Really think about how much time it would add to nail the last council member. Maybe you're rocking a level 20 grief with extra off weapon IAS and your merc has already proc'd decrepify and it's worth it, but sometimes it's best to just keep moving.
Can Be Frozen
WW seems to pwn the council to pieces when I'm chilled and/or holy frosty. Unless it's all in my head, removing raven frost was the smartest thing I ever did.
Crushing Blow
Based on all of my damage calcs, a succesful crushing blow in the first few hits is always going to do more damage than my weapons could under ideal circumstances (merc decrep + critical hit + super high damage). I think P1 council members have like 80K base HP, which means a proc of crushing blow is goign to add 20K damage if you get it first hit, and a hefty amount any other hit. I think Goblin Toes, from a strictly mathematical point of view, are going to add WAY more damage than goreriders or war travs. I'm seriously considering ditching arreat's for the same reason.
Objects in motion
Of course, the caveat to all of the above: If anything done for efficiency makes the runs less fun, and makes you inclined to do fewer, that's a bad thing too. So if you want to pick up every gem and potion and clear the council every time, I promise I won't judge
H
After double clicking your barb, press 'H' to choose hell difficulty. Avoid accidentally clicking on nightmare, save a second.
FCR
I run with a suicide branch and lidless wall on switch. It's not ideal, but I tele quickly and hork quickly. Savings add up!
Warcry
I'm much stronger now than I was when I started, but warcry could be the ideal dump for extra skills. Especially if you don't care about having 55% hork chance, you can afford to dump some points here. If it's the first thing you do after you teleport into the council, you'll start the battle with a good amount more safety than usual.
Open questions:
+ Mana burn: I take pots and manage to get through, but this still hurts my run times. If I take a few hits and have to stop, potion, wait to recharge, and whirl again it's risky to characters and also slow. Any elegant solutions?
+R/W vs. WW: Is it worth loading up on R/W for waypoint running (in act 4 via TP) or is it best to stay slow for more whirlwind damage?
+Proper WW technique: I've worked some on the 'dance of death' (I was doing it all wrong to begin with) but sometimes I still wind up just whirling across the screen. I guess I need to get more disciplined on my pointer, I don't know if anybody has anything particular to add here...
