Elmyder

To be completely honest, it is easier/less effort to run around on a normal endgame build with strong def/res/other mitigations and simply carry in insps for select encounters. It's easy to say something is easy when you are committed to never trying it yourself :P (not looking at you lol) Fire/fire blaster is fastest but a terrible idea unless tryhard speedrunning. Veracor demonstrated that a tanker can do it safely, but I know he used ultimates and reds. Quite a few people have done it on scrappers, including no insp challenges. There is the classic /bio scrappers that shine, like tw/bio or em/bio. I have personally managed a pretty safe run of solo mltf with an ill/rad but recluse will be tricky until yellow tower falls, and due to the unique ill/rad playstyle, you may or may not enjoy. I think for most general solo builds, the only big threats will be patrons and recluse. Mostly scirocco due to extreme -def debuffs (like over 100% at times), and recluse due to yellow tower raising soft cap to 75% and him dealing big end drain on hit. You can mitigate these circumstamtially with accolades (demonic and geas) if you can kill fast enough, or if allowing insps, bring def/res/blue and monitor your def values during combat.

No, and there is no need for consensus. Both have been done many times without "exploits". I personally soloed each major endgame task force with my ill/rad using no inspirations years ago. MLTF and LRSF both took over two hours. I also believe a scrapper with normal inspiration use would be able to make it through both relatively quickly and smoothly. Probably been done a few times but I don't have references. Edit: there is a reference directly above this post, turns out. Thank you @Songseven :)

fwiw there is a difference between a mechanic that is overpowered and a mechanic that makes the game easy. Inspirations straddle both sides of this, as there are some contexts where popping a few inspirations can largely trivialize the content for minimal effort. But in the most extreme cases that are being called out in this thread, such as chaining inspirations via email in a solo speedrun setting, it is overpowered, sure, but it is not easy, nor is it trivializing content in a way that removes any challenge and by extension fun. Planning the run and juggling the op mechanic in a high speed/high risk situation is what's fun. Well, at least for me. And then there are contexts where inspirations helps players running less powerful builds complete content like a difficult boss in early levels. I won't ignore this just because I play in a bubble of min maxed builds. Like I said, I personally dislike inspirations as a mechanic, but that is merely a personal opinion. No matter what the state of the game, I'll try to find the best ways to go as fast as possible cause that's fun for me. Yes, my solo mltf time would have not worked if I could not claim insps during combat. I would quite literally be spamming click -> tab -> click -> tab (tab is my keybind ot eat insps) on claim from chracter items at some points during towers/recluse. Although it is pretty op, don't underestimate how mentally taxing it is to concentrate on everything enough to effectively pull this off when you dive bomb patrons on a solo blaster lol. If you or anyone would like to see exactly how the run was done, I have it in an unlisted youtube video:

I think insps are game breaking in their current state because the stats they provide compare to stats provided by other buffs in the game, and also relative to the stats necessary to nullify game mechanics. If you use inspirations in the right way, you can effectively ignore most mechanics in the game. Even if you forget about supers and email and only rely on drops, my /fire blasters with absolutely no meaningful defensive layers can *usually* survive in level 54 mobs by killing fast and eating every inspiration the moment it drops. I sometimes joke that if everyone bound their move keys to "inspexecslot 1$$inspexecslot 2" (or similar) then they would automatically be much stronger, but tbh this is effectively how I play in casual runs, and I actually think it is good lol. Nevertheless, I am not calling for any nerfs and don't really expect any outside of new upcoming challenge settings. I certainly don't think anyone ought to play like me (it is not even fun unless you are a weirdo like me lol). My evaluations are just my opinion, but that is what the opinion is based on.

ah, my apologies, I did misunderstand. Thanks for the clarification! I would say they are expensive because enough people can afford to min max. I don't think there are enough serious speedrunners to impact the market much, but these are not the only people I know who are willing to pay a premium for a small improvement. And that's gonna come down to player wealth more so than the relative percentages. Also I will note that the benefit of hami os are a bit different than that. A 50+5 run io is better speed than a micro, but a micro is close and also enhances endurance. Two will bring both stats roughly to ed. Same with cyto in tactics. Two cytos in tactics enhance to hit and endurance significantly more than one to hit and one end redux. A speedrunner however might not care about endurance because of all their temps and therefore not choose the hami o. (I always put a run io in sprint for better move speed during combat suppression, vs a hami o in super speed because that is enough to speed cap so might as well get some end too.) So rather than being a way to get a miniscule stat boost, hami os are more aptly seen as a way to save enhancemt slots on a general build.

So first of all, I actually completely agree with this. Not only do I think emailing insps to yourself is game breaking, I believe inspirations themselves are game breaking. (My opinion, not necessarily shared by anyone I play with.) If any nerf was to come to inspirations, from merely banning email usage in missions, all the way to removing them from the game, I would accept it and rebalance my gameplay around it. I don't actually *like* inspirations mechanically (again, my opinion), because I'm naturally more a fan of leveraging mechanics in builds, but when it comes to speedrunning, as it is in the speedrunning community of any game, the spirit is to use everything available in the game, including exploits, to achieve the best possible time. Runs like this are done in the interest of fun, challenge, and competition, not in the interest of exploiting anything for in game benefits. I merely find it fun to challenge the limits of the game. I will note, with solo MLTF being a prime example, that the planning that goes into these runs and the concentration it takes to manage temps and inspiration chain effectively greatly exceed the benefit they provide. For instance, it took me much much longer to complete the run in the screenshot posted above than it would have taken me to join a pug and complete the task force. Not only is my solo time slower than most speed pugs, and the planning time longer, but you should also take into account runs that were messed up midway, at which point I would quit mid task force, restock insrpirations, go to bloody bay to restock shivans, go to warburg to restock on nukes, yadayada. Not to mention how the inspirations used each run have a large price tag in total. So while I understand why you have this perspective, it's very far off base. With the above in mind, the kind of speedruns that exploit things like emailed inspirations are not only inefficient for farming rewards, they cost far far more in time and resources than they yield. That said, I do know people who speedrun task forces to farm merits and hami os. They do not chain inspirations, they do not use email exploits, temps, anything out of the ordinary. As that would be wasteful. They use optimized builds and knowledge of the game to complete the major endgame task forces in maybe 10-15ish mins a piece with mininal downtime between runs. But it would also be naive to suppose runs like this have anything to do with the economy. Just on the topic of hami os, hamidon raids are by and large the primary source of the supply, and the easiest way to acquire them. To answer the implied question directly though, cytos, micros, and nucleoli are expensive because they are optimal in many builds. The others are cheaper because they are used in far fewer builds. They all have the exact same rarity. In any case! Don't worry, I figured as much haha. I've seen my fair share of UIs that boggle my mind. One thing I love so much about this game is the extent to which I can customize it. No worries, and thank you! I'd really like to land a new i27 record of this and others. Hopefully not too long from now we can post new times. Coordinating with other plays on the necessary level is sometimes more of a challenge than the runs themselves xD. I'm fairly certain that this team or similar could do repeated sub 10 runs at this point without much preparation. I also believe with the i27 changes and new knowledge that a faster time is possible. We have done these many times as both casual and serious practice, so it's hard to quantify "how many", but I want to say on the day this was our second or third attempt to break the previous record.

That's what custom target keybinds are for :) That said, I run an ultrawide now, which affords me quite a bit more screen real estate than then.

The idea is to reduce eye movement between my power trays, health bar, stats monitor window, inspirations, and target. I find it easier to focus when playing when I can see everything that matters for combat in a smaller portion of the screen.

Thanks! I'm assuming you mean fastest i27 run? This run is i26 and therefore not on speedrun.com anymore.

To make sure I get the proper bragging rights, I completed it in 31 minutes :) As you can see from the screenshot, 100 inspirations in my email was insufficient, needed character item insps from super packs. I realized the only way to do this speedy enough was to cap def/res and melee towers.

Can you please clarify which bug you are referring to? I'm not aware of any bug with t4 alpha, and after testing, t4 musc core and radial both appear to be working as expected.

The first time I soloed Kahn, the Reichsman fight took an hour 15 about. I used the temp only once. Burk's follow up explains why. Practically, you probably never actually saw it reset. You may be mistaking it for unstoppable, which he pops constantly throughout the fight.

First blind test on my fire/fire blaster was 4:34. I used ageless core, had assault hybrid passive (not clicked), alpha and interface slotted, no other incarnates. (+4x8 and EB, as per what Kanil said in discord.) There were lots of mistakes. Lost at least 20 seconds chasing down a boss who ran away. Had a few attack chain mistakes, didn't prioritize bosses well at all, and some movement inefficiencies. Will try again in the future. I expect to get at least sub 4 with a little practice.

For us, it was actually a last minute switch when someone couldn't make it, based on the available characters. Swapping the defender for a mm was better than dropping a fire/fire or one of the corruptors :P But to do a bit of performance analysis: Mechanically, mms have the highest st dps ceiling in the game, the challenge is getting the pets to the right location in time and keeping them buffed (especially because external buffs are dropped on rezone). Therefore, in practice, I think they do well in tfs with lots of avs and incan chaining, like mltf. However, they work very poorly in tfs with lots of trash mobs and manual movement, like itf. If you do go mm, demons is nice because of 1. fire/cold damage and 2. extra -res. Finally, in the context of a competition with no reruns, it's worth mentioning that a mm has a bit of an edge at freeing patrons if they become inextricably stuck inside walls on cuda lol. Upon reflection, I personally think the best comp under these AT restrictions would be something like 2x fire/fire, fire/kin corr, fire/cold corr, sonic/fire def, and some kind of bio scrapper. (The only reason for giving sonic to the defender is based on -res numbers, since sleet is standardized. It is a small difference.) The dom probably makes hami marginally faster, but it is easy enough to dps through the green shields, and char on the fire/fires would make it even faster.

Old record, but pre video ban: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0FnrN69L10