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

Counter proposal: no blaster runs :) And for reference, our team ran 2x fire/fire blaster fire/cold corr fire/kin corr plant/fire dom demons/sonic mm We did originally plan to run a defender, but on account of some rl issues, we had some last minute team comp switch ups. (Huge thank you to Burk for filling in for us last minute!) Thank you Mojo for all the work you put into the event!

Update: Some testing and data from pre i27. It does indeed appear that procs in cauterizing aura have changed, perhaps unintentionally. First, here is a chatlog from 8/28/2020 proving that cauterizing aura used to proc without hitting mobs. I was hitting no mobs here, or else the log would report hit rolls and damage. This is an ice/fire blaster, so theft of essence can only be slotted in cauterizing aura. Note line 33 where it procs. Now here I demonstrate that cauterizing aura is procing when it is hitting enemies. In this screenshot, cauterizing is slotted with theft of essence and the blaster ATO that gives status protection, but nothing else. Note that both of them have gone off while I sat in these mobs. In the time it took me to write this post, I've been idling outside of mobs and neither of these procs have fired.

Edit: I did something really stupid and left procs in health/stamina without thinking, so that wasn't procing on cauterizing. I unslotted them from health and I'm actually not seeing procs on cauterizing while idle. The strange thing is I am like 99% sure this was not true in the past, because I remember testing proc rates of these things while idling in my base. I am certain these were going off in cauterizing because I was specifically noting theft of the essence proc rates, which cannot go in health. Whereas now I am not getting a single theft of the essence proc. I will test later while hitting enemies to see if that makes the difference. Regardless, this now is looking to me like something unexpectedly changed since a few months back. The image doesn't convey anything useful, but I don't know if it's possible to remove it.

Look at this man just slaughtering me like that.

Both of these are not much of an issue on a full team where you can divide up in a predetermined way, but solo, they are huge. I was extremely lucky on my current solo ITF and LGTF records. Had the linear cyst map on ITF. LGTF could have been better, but glacia was just one spawn point of backtracking, and thankfully I checked backwards first. Kahn also has some map rng on mission 3, but it's not too bad if you memorize all the maps and the Franz and glowie locations. The real craziness, though, is when you do a solo run so many times that you start talking about hit roll rng. Like "shit, blazing bolt missed twice in a row, might as well restart" lol. (This actually did become a topic of conversation on penny yin times.)

When (in some distant future) the video ban is lifted, you will get to see first hand 🙂 (I have a recording of mine which I will post on youtube once I'm able. Although Bloodom has already destroyed my time because he's a monster. I'm sure he also has a recording.) In the meantime, enjoy this glorious screenshot of how I attacked the eb phase in mission 1:

Sounds like this is about Synapse? I soloed Synapse in 29 mins (screenshot in the previous page). A team of 3 beat me by about a minute or two iirc. So sub 30 is possible. I personally expect a duo to achieve the best possible time. Getting into the low 20s should be possible. When I review my video, I can add up all the tiny mistakes I made an estimate what an ideal run could have looked like. It's at least like 3 minutes faster. Thing with Synapse though, is that map rng is big. Some of the kill all maps are much smaller than others. I restarted the tf like 10 times in a row the night I did my sub 30 run.

ZeeHero, Jimmy has asked us not to call out people publicly. As I see it, calling out a specific channel whose leadership is already publicly cited in this thread is tantamount to calling out those individuals as being toxic. I would rather not have any more drama aired than is necessary, but in light of the discussion you prompted, I'll just say a few things: 1. Everlasting TFs is a public channel, not a private one. Anyone is free and encouraged to join. The purpose is to foster an active community for players of all levels around scheduled endgame content. 2. In spite of the channel's public status, we obviously have a vested interest in keeping it free from toxicity so that we can be most welcoming to new players. Just like any decent public forum you join. We very rarely remove or silence people, and it is far from the first resort for behavior we consider unacceptable. If anyone is removed or silenced, there is a good documented reason for it, and most likely, a relatively long history.

I actually don't have a fire/ice blaster, you must be thinking of either my fire/fire blaster or my fire/cold corruptor. I have soloed a lot of content on both of these. I've done solo speedruns of most endgame task forces on the fire/fire. I also mained an ill/rad for a while when I first joined Homecoming, and successfully soloed a lot of content on this, including speedruns of LGTF (27 mins). As for MLTF and Kahn, I have soloed both. I did MLTF in 31 mins on my fire/fire and Kahn in 16 mins on my fire/cold, and I know Bloodom soloed Kahn on his fire/fire in a faster time. Long ago I soloed both of these on my ill/rad in much slower times. Edit: I actually asked myself before what content would be impossible for me to solo on my fire/fire. So far, I don't have an answer. The best contender in my mind is Barracuda. The question is whether I can summon enough pets to out dps his regen during his invulnerable phases. Another one is LGTF, but I'm pretty confident I can solo LGTF if I respec into char and slot it for hold. I was going to make a new build to try this but haven't gotten around to it yet. (Some itrials probably too, I actually haven't thought too hard about those because they're not easy to enter solo.)

Solo MLTF