A new challenge.

[Sovera]

3 hours ago, Uun said:

After 2 initial deaths, cleared the map and completed the mission on my SR/Staff. +1x8, no temps, no inspirations. Basic strategy was to run out of Tar Patch and around a corner every time it was cast (I've got 60% speed debuff resistance). 

 

 

Tried that earlier and it did nothing. But I'll try one more time with the 'hitting their heads while hovering' just to see how that works out.

[ZemX]

While my Rad/Staff could do it at +1/x8, it wasn't going to happen at +4/x8.  Not without picking each spawn apart with careful pulls, at which point... am I really doing x8?

 

The problem wasn't Tar Patch since I can just run away from it.  It was the toHit debuffs.  No Focused Accuracy exemplared to 29.  I had Tactics and a Kismet IO only and that wasn't enough.  My Last Hit Chance was floored around 11%.   And that's the ballgame.

[Werner]

58 minutes ago, ZemX said:

While my Rad/Staff could do it at +1/x8, it wasn't going to happen at +4/x8.  Not without picking each spawn apart with careful pulls, at which point... am I really doing x8?

I’m answering a rhetorical question, and it’s only my opinion, but yes, my opinion is that it’s still x8, that it still counts to win using tactics rather than win with pure brute force. I feel like the game has become so easy that we’ve somehow accepted that if you can’t faceroll a challenge, or can’t AFK in a spawn, it doesn’t count. There are limits to going the other direction, I suppose, as I think stealthing to Anna to win is going way too far. But are we here to evaluate builds in isolation, see how well builds do when played almost intentionally poorly? Or do we want to know how they do when played actively with some basic MMO tactics? I’m not suggesting we adopt this attitude here, to these sorts of challenges, but I DO like the simple purity of “anything goes” often seen in PvP and speedrun communities, that if the game allows it, it’s allowed. I have serious respect for that, and for those communities, even if they aren’t my interests. Anyway, just my opinion. I also very much like “you do you”, where we all have our own personal rules for what we allow and don’t allow ourselves, and we’re just up front about those personal rules. A no pulling, no splitting the spawn rule is perfectly valid as either a personal rule, or a challenge-specific rule. The Rikti War Zone Challenge explicitly disallowed splitting the spawn, for instance. The point was to show you could fight them all at the same time. Certainly we can add rules to this challenge to make it harder, like no splitting the spawn or no hoverdancing on heads. Whatever we want. I’m totally rambling and my opinions are clearly all over the map. I’m shutting up now! 😄

[nihilii]

On the topic of new challenges... Anyone gearing up for the new settings on Beta right now?

 

I was afraid we'd see things that would all but force teaming, but looking at the changes, it's incrementations that should make things extremely punishing and *potentially* impossible to solo, but not *necessarily* so.

Namely: enforced +4/x8, no insps, no temps, no amplifiers, some lieuts become bosses, some bosses become EBs.
All mobs get +20% Resistance[Lethal/Smashing], +30% Resistance[All but S/L], +30% Defense[All], +40% Damage[All], +30% ToHit, 66ft Perception radius.
AVs get double HP (but still the same regen) and Praetorian tohit (63.75% base).

 

Which I guess would imply AVs actually get 93.75% tohit (?)

 

It seems to me being mostly defense simply won't cut it anymore outside of T9s*, but resistance+regen/hp ought to work just as well (we'll take 2x the damage or what have you). The challenge being to keep DPS up enough to take out those level 54 AVs with +20/30% resistance on top of whatever native resistances they already have.

 

*and I'm already overjoyed I get yet another excuse to work on Elude+Barrier builds.

Maybe Relentless/Invincible will prove too hard (I still intend to exploit Lore to the best of my abilities to try to make things happen...). But I wonder how far we can crank up the difficulty anyway. There's a lot of granularity to this new challenge system, and I'm hoping to see all of you kings posting some new achievements once this goes live. 🙂

Edited November 8, 2021 by nihilii

[Linea]

58 minutes ago, nihilii said:

The challenge being to keep DPS up enough to take out those level 54 AVs with +20/30% resistance on top of whatever native resistances they already have.

This.

 

It's 801.5 to 801.7 range difficulty, with BUFFED AVs added in.   If you can solo 801.5 to 801.7, no-temps, no-inspirations, and still be packing 500 dps, ... that's more or less what I expect it will take to solo ASF Hardmode 5.  ... which is to say I wholly expect to duo it, but not solo it.   Downgrade the AVs to EBs, removing the dps check, and yes, I suspect I'd at least try to solo it HM5.

 

Edited November 8, 2021 by Linea

[ZemX]

1 hour ago, Werner said:

I’m answering a rhetorical question

 

Half rhetorical.  It does feel a bit to me like it's not much different than x4 if I am splitting spawns, aside from the total number of mobs you have to get through to complete it.  But I was also curious what others thought of it.  So thanks for that.  It is completely up to the people who run challenges to agree on a set of rules if there's to be any competition on it.  This one seemed more to be like an exploratory "Can you do it?" and nobody was hiding HOW they were doing it.  So no foul, in my book.

 

If this ever progressed to the point where people were competing, like Trapdoor or Pylons, there'd probably be clear times added to the mix and that would sort who is having to pull and split vs. who can hop in and handle the entire spawn at once.

[Uun]

17 hours ago, Sovera said:

Tried that earlier and it did nothing. But I'll try one more time with the 'hitting their heads while hovering' just to see how that works out.

Tried it on my Stone/Elec brute and that was a no go, even with running out of the Tar Patch and spamming the heck out of Fault. Missing too many powers at lvl 29.

[Bill Z Bubba]

3 hours ago, Werner said:

I’m answering a rhetorical question, and it’s only my opinion, but yes, my opinion is that it’s still x8, that it still counts to win using tactics rather than win with pure brute force. I feel like the game has become so easy that we’ve somehow accepted that if you can’t faceroll a challenge, or can’t AFK in a spawn, it doesn’t count. There are limits to going the other direction, I suppose, as I think stealthing to Anna to win is going way too far. But are we here to evaluate builds in isolation, see how well builds do when played almost intentionally poorly? Or do we want to know how they do when played actively with some basic MMO tactics? I’m not suggesting we adopt this attitude here, to these sorts of challenges, but I DO like the simple purity of “anything goes” often seen in PvP and speedrun communities, that if the game allows it, it’s allowed. I have serious respect for that, and for those communities, even if they aren’t my interests. Anyway, just my opinion. I also very much like “you do you”, where we all have our own personal rules for what we allow and don’t allow ourselves, and we’re just up front about those personal rules. A no pulling, no splitting the spawn rule is perfectly valid as either a personal rule, or a challenge-specific rule. The Rikti War Zone Challenge explicitly disallowed splitting the spawn, for instance. The point was to show you could fight them all at the same time. Certainly we can add rules to this challenge to make it harder, like no splitting the spawn or no hoverdancing on heads. Whatever we want. I’m totally rambling and my opinions are clearly all over the map. I’m shutting up now! 😄

 

They're sound opinions seemingly based in logic and rationality. So ramble on. I dig the discussions.

 

I've got some hopes for the new hardmode stuff. Oddly, those hopes are all based on teaming related ideas, which we can all agree is kinda weird for me.

[ZemX]

8 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

I've got some hopes for the new hardmode stuff. Oddly, those hopes are all based on teaming related ideas, which we can all agree is kinda weird for me.

 

Not weird at all.  You don't have trouble finding a solo challenge these days.  It's teaming at level 50 that's become a joke, mostly.  So yeah, I am totally looking forward to being able to play at 50 on a team and not have it be just a rolling explosion that obliterates all in its path.  Fun to watch the first time.  Boring as all hell afterwards.

[Bodhivajra]

So I went in the first time -- SR/Claws tank, no temps/insps -- and got blasted down to about 5% health by the first spawn, at which point I left to gather my courage, psychologically broken. The second time went just fine -- easier than expected, in truth -- just by running out of the Tar Patch. I don't think the mobs could land enough tohit debuffs to make a combat difference; I was initially mistaken about which mobs had Vengeance, but by the time that was an issue it was usually down to 3 bosses, which were not too bad even buffed by their fellows' deaths. There was a lot of running around and I'm definitely not feeling confident about +2 or higher.

 

Re: the new challenge settings, there is zero chance I can maintain the DPS on my main to take down 54 AVs with added resistance -- I know because a 54 AV with 25% lethal resistance is a hard wall for me -- but I still look forward to it as a team challenge. I mean, if one COULD solo everything on all hardmodes, the endless cycle of samsara would just begin again, right?

[PLVRIZR]

22 hours ago, Bodhivajra said:

I mean, if one COULD solo everything on all hardmodes, the endless cycle of samsara would just begin again, right?

 

...and I think (and agree) that is the point.  Trying to get back to where teamwork by multiple ATs is required to complete a task or kill...err "arrest" a target.  Kinda like in college, where the exams were designed to crush the smartest person in the class (my brick wall was Physical Chemistry/Thermodynamics in a Biophysics major) and then grade on the curve.  Nothing like scoring a 55% and still getting a "B" 😁

[Bionic_Flea]

Tried this on my Inv/SS and was shocked at how quickly he was taken down, even after a couple of tries.  I have no AoE at this level on my build.  If I had footstomp, I think I might be able to tough it through.

 

I was wondering why I didn't remember this savagery from earlier play throughs and I assume it's because I generally don't go /x8 until the 40s on most characters.

 

I need to go back and try different tactics.

[Bionic_Flea]

I went back and "cheated" by pulling around a corner and splitting the spawns up a bit and I used inspirations when I got surrounded and tar patched, which prevented me from running or jumping away.

 

It's surprising how much of a difference a few more critters make.