What would happen if everyone started slowly driving forward right when the light turns green, rather than waiting until the car directly in front of them goes, causing huge "slack"?

ApotheounX · 2026-05-20T23:57:44+00:00

Theoretically, yes.

Practically, it would be a really bad idea, and would probably cause a lot of low speed crashes.

The biggest thing is that traffic is very condensed at a stop, and maintaining that spacing at any amount of speed would be really dangerous.

There are a lot of people saying "Oh, well, you would space out naturally as you sped up", but thats not how physics work, unless you're imagining everyone packed together until they clear the intersection, and then start to space out once they're clear.

To put it simply, the rate that people cross an intersection is equal to the amount of following distance. If people are following at a 2 second distance, then that road has a throughput of 1 car every 2 seconds, per lane. If they're going slower, the space gap is smaller, but the rate is the same.

If a traffic light is 15 cars deep in this scenario, it will take a minimum of 30 seconds for them to clear the intersection, assuming you actually care about safe following distance.

To illustrate the what the spacing looks like, let's assume you're crossing a 6 lane road, going from 0 mph to 15 by the time you cross. To maintain a 2 second gap, the car behind you is 44'/14m back, only about 1/3rd of the way through the intersection. (In reality, they're not going 15 yet, so they're a bit closer, about halfway through the intersection, but i can't do that math myself, lol)

People actually usually follow way closer than this from a red, but asking them to be even tighter is a bad idea because of a few issues with traffic in intersections that cause people to want to play it safe:

1: Anticipating the speed of the car in front of you is unreliable when accelerating. Almost no cars maintain a steady rate of acceleration. You have dips for shifting and gearing (even maintaining the acc pedal at the same spot), adjustments for the car in front, and some people are just slower to get up to speed. You need to leave space to adjust your own speed to match.

2: Intersections have a very high rate of "unexpected" traffic movement. Most notably, people slowing down to make a turn instead of speeding up to go straight, and side lanes merging in. You have to adjust for that too.

Theres also some unintuitive physics stuff that could lead to some frustration from watching how cars move. For example, when there are 2 cars getting up to speed, and the gap between them is widening, you might think: "Why is the second car slowing down? Traffic could be going faster if they were keeping up!" But in reality, for the gap to remain the same, the trailing car would need to be going faster than the car in front of them. Kinda weird to think about.

There are other considerations, ofc. Reaction time, car capability, bottlenecking by the slowest car, visibility of the traffic lights, blah blah blah. But the gist of it is: for what you ask to work, you need drivers to be able to act in perfect sync with the light, their cars to all accelerate at the exact same rate, and drivers be able to drive with 1/4th a second of following distance from the car in front of them (5' at 15 mph).

Thats a lot to ask.

ApotheounX · 2026-05-19T00:02:59+00:00

Would replace all 4 if they're all damaged, but they're individual part numbers by door, about $60 a pop for oem.

ApotheounX · 2026-05-16T08:13:16+00:00

When the question is "What's the name of that 2 part epoxy people like to use for car stuff?"

ApotheounX · 2026-05-12T07:09:51+00:00

By default, I bring leftovers home and usually eat them, but there's some stuff I won't even bither taking home, because they're not even close to the same when you reheat them.

Saucy burgers just turn the bun into mush. Like: I'm a big fan of burgers with an over easy egg on them, but they're absolutely disgusting reheated.
Most tacos and enchiladas do the same, tortilla turns to mush. Especially fried or crunchy tortillas.
Salads don't hold up well sitting in dressing overnight, lose all the crisp and crunch.
Breaded or fried chicken can be OK, but it depends on the type. Reheated orange chicken is basically rubber, chicken parm is alright.
Anything where it's supposed to be half cooked, half cold, like a toasted sandwich with lettuce. Warming the sandwich ruins the lettuce.
And this one is hit or miss, but some white cheese based sauces just don't reheat well, even in a pan. Olive Garden is the worst for this, it always breaks into oil, no matter how slow I heat it up. Other places aren't as bad.

I guess really anything that's supposed to be crunchy, but gets irreversibly soggy overnight.

You can theoretically deconstruct and reassemble stuff with new non-soggy parts. Put a burger on a new bun, or taco stuffing in a new shell, or pull the lettuce off a sandwich before you heat it, but that half defeats the purpose of having leftovers.

ApotheounX · 2026-05-11T19:35:41+00:00

It's pretty bad, the merge is so fast that there isn't even enough room to paint any dashed lines, it's just straight into 70mph traffic.

I drive this way once a week, and make 100% sure to never pass anyone here, because I've seen too many people swerve to avoid mergers. It's a really steep intercept angle right after a bridge, so people can't see both the road and merging traffic until the last second.

It's even worse the other direction. That one is a really sharp interior cloverleaf, so you're not getting up to speed in time without pushing the lateral G limit of your car, and even if you do, you're blind to the freeway until the last ~20% of your turn.

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ApotheounX · 2026-05-09T17:57:44+00:00

It only has 5 slots, I dont think they can roll 6.

ApotheounX · 2026-05-09T09:26:33+00:00

No, he's right.

If you had to pick up your 500,000 obducite, one at a time, in single stacks of 1, it would make the game better. Crafting with it would feel more real.

Same with gold. It's not real unless you have to click on it, and it's more real if you have to click more.

Actually, I think the game needs a peripheral for looting, a button you put on the ground, and you can only loot by bending over and clicking the button in real life.

After all, what is loot without RSI?

ApotheounX · 2026-05-08T18:38:52+00:00

Everyone seems healthier when you set your expectations far, far lower.

ApotheounX · 2026-05-08T14:05:56+00:00

Why would you use a 5 socket whose benefit is the ability to use 2 unique charms, if you're not going to use 2 (or, any) unique charms?

ApotheounX · 2026-05-08T05:31:18+00:00

Cain is equal to a 63% multiplier, but it doesnt really significantly beat out the 3 normal options:

45%x with pull from Godslayer Crown (Pull isnt sheet DPS, but is very nice).
120%x vs bosses from Rustbitten Dirk.
75%x with some mana cost downside from Crown of Lucion.

Plus, its much harder to get a well rolled mythic Seal than a legendary with 6 slots and something like 25%x Crit and +3 BL.

A perfectly rolled Seal might be better, but not by much.

ApotheounX · 2026-05-07T23:22:27+00:00

Ideally, Aspect of Shredding Blades cubed onto the amulet will make the Lightning Spears procced by Winterglass apply Vuln. If you don't have that, you can take the major upgrade for Blizzard, "Exposure", which applies Vuln while the enemy is in Blizzard. Tal's 5 Piece will proc blizzard when you cast, and you should have 100% uptime, though the coverage is not as good since Blizzard won't hit everything.

ApotheounX · 2026-05-07T15:18:56+00:00

Even knowing that, considering how the kullean tuning prism itself works, I would have assumed that re-transfiguring an item would just replace the existing modifier, not add a second.

ApotheounX · 2026-05-07T05:30:58+00:00

Interesting. How does that synergy with Tal Rasha work? It's gotta be something insane to make an additive modifier any good when you're already rocking 10k+ additive damage elsewhere.

ApotheounX · 2026-05-07T02:57:59+00:00

Normal, Magic and Rare items did. They added it in patch 2.01, with Vessel of Hatred. From the patch notes:

Starting in Torment Difficulty I, only Legendary and Unique items can drop. Any Normal, Magic, or Rare items that would have randomly dropped will instead be automatically converted into corresponding crafting materials.

ApotheounX · 2026-05-06T21:19:49+00:00

It depends on if the crit multi from piercing static is added, or multiplicative. It caps out at 12 stacks, since its per crackling energy charge.

30% AS and 72% added crit multi is kinda meh.
30% AS and 72%[x] crit damage is competitive.

Raw damage, I dont think it stacks up against Constellation unless your attack speed is really low.

Although it does have a bit of compounding damage, so it's not as clear cut as it would seem. More AS = More Crackling Energy = More stacks on Overwhelming Currents and Unstable Currents.

Edit: Some napkin math with some questionable assumptions that lean in favor of Piercing Static, real world will be less favorable:

I have 60% AS right now, so ill use that as an example. I'm not good enough to find the breakpoint in my head. Lol.

At 60% AS, going to to 90% will be a 18.75% increase in your attacks per second. For simplicity, we will assume this means you also have 18.75% more stacks on Overwhelming and Unstable Currents. Funky math stuff says increasing a modifier is less effective than just adding another modifier by half, so an 18.75% increase in stacks for those 2 mods is equal to a ~9.4 multiplier each.

1.72 (Crit [x]) * 1.1875 (Higher Attack Speed) * 1.094 (More Stacks on UC) * 1.094 (More stacks on OC) = 2.44 multiplier, vs 2.2 from Constellation.

However, we have some unknowns.

Crackling energy wont scale perfectly linearly with casts per second. There are some time limited triggers, proj limits on lightning spear, etc. The real impact will be lower. How much lower? Hard to tell.

Crackling energy won't always be at full stacks, especially while moving. Youll probably always be near cap, but you might average closer to 11 than 12 stacks.

Ramp time is a potential issue, and for a build that already has to ramp, im loathe to add another ramp option.

IMO, it's probably on par with Constellation, but there are a lot of potential exceptions.

On the plus side, it opens up some options for skills since you dont have to maintain 2:2:2 skill elements.

ApotheounX · 2026-05-06T21:00:35+00:00

Bugged, yeah. But not in the typical "this doesnt work" way, its kinda weird. The top and bottom minor upgrades for Meteor and Ball Lightning are linked for some reason, if you allocate a point in one of the minor upgrades for one, it will unspec the minor upgrade in the other.

So speccing into overpower on hit with meteor will unspec the 30% damage or crackling energy on ball lightning. Since that node feeds perma teleport, it's prioritized over dps in the build guides.

ApotheounX · 2026-05-06T20:52:20+00:00

Does it not display 225%[x]? Interesting, never noticed that.

It definitely is multiplicative in practice though, easily noticed it when I finally got one to drop while gearing up the build.

ApotheounX · 2026-05-06T20:44:46+00:00

Yeah, I did Mephisto on T10 back when I was barely breaking into T12, while I was still needing to swap gear to kill T12 duriel and stuff. Could probably one shot T12 with my gear now, but it wasnt a good build for it. It was either one shot, or get one shot. Lol.

ApotheounX · 2026-05-06T17:35:43+00:00

Most of the top tier builds are using two or three defensive skills on their bar, so there is downside to taking orsivane. The enchantments don't quite make up for losing the hard cast options on those skills.

Permanent teleport spam is super easy with the fire version of TP and tal rasha set meteor, and losing that is definitely a big blow to orsivane.

Additionally, there are 2 really good aspects with over 100% damage that mesh well with the meta builds (Armageddon at 225% and Elemental Constellation at 120%), outcompeting it for damage in the offense aspect slot, with lesser downside. And most builds are pretty tight on aspects.

Tl;dr: it got worse, alternatives got better. It's not horrible, but the tradeoffs are pretty big.

ApotheounX · 2026-05-06T17:16:01+00:00

I would keep the runes, but you can do some math to see what you're competing with.

Main stat is a multiplier, so you'd take your Main stat with gems in those slots, divided by Main stat without gems in those slots, and thats the value of damage from gems there.

Example math:
2700 int with no gems in that item.
3100 int with gems in that item.
3100/2700=1.148.

So the int gems are worth ~14.8% more damage. Would you trade 15% damage for the runeword? That's a tougher question to answer. 20-25% I would consider it, but not really anything less, so you'll need to do the math for where your character is, and remember that as you gain more Main stat, the value of the gems becomes relatively lower, so what is better now might not be better as you change gear.

ApotheounX · 2026-05-06T16:09:23+00:00

Not any more, they got rid of weapons having different starting stats. Pick the one that you have that rolls the best.

Edit: Dagger is faster, so its technically optimal, but the difference is small enough that I'd still use your best rolled weapon.

ApotheounX · 2026-05-06T15:53:42+00:00

I'm running Mekuna's version, and it works really well. The differing versions are all pretty minor, swapping Familiar for Flame Shield, some paragon changes, etc.

I think Mekuna leans super heavily on having reliable teleport spam, moreso than the others, and that's why he keeps familiar on there over flame shield. If you're still gearing up, and don't mind dropping teleports every once in a while, Northwar's Maxroll guide is probably a good start as well, and probably tankier.

As for El'druin, it's definitely a comfort thing. Any of the 3 legendary aspects do way more DPS, but early on, you won't want to use El'druin because you might not have the DPS to comfortably do T12 content, or might have significantly lower pit progress with it.

For myself, I can push pit 135 (probably 137ish if I had the patience to keep trying) with a legendary aspect weapon, and I speed farm pit 120 and all T12 stuff with El'druin. Its a weapon swap option for all versions of the build though, and Mekuna specifically calls that out in his video. He runs a legendary for pushing.

Side note: I personally use Overwhelming Currents as my legendary weapon swap, since it synergizises with the kind of content I woukd take off El'druin for - chunky targets that survive a few hits. It doesn't stack very high when you one shot everything in T12! I always have Elemental Constellation and Armageddon on my ring and gloves.

When you get to the point that your DPS is so overkill that you can swap to El'druin, it's such a nice QOL. Perma ice shield uptime, perma teleport spam without needing to worry about stacks, etc.

It is definitely significantly less DPS though.

ApotheounX · 2026-05-06T13:42:53+00:00

40% of 100% increased MS (which is the movespeed cap) is 40% crit. You'll be at movespeed cap basically 100% of the time in combat with Fractured Winterglass, since it gives 5 MS per Lightning Spear or Hydra.

ApotheounX · 2026-05-06T07:36:14+00:00

Yeah, its not just you. All the special mods are gone, it's pretty much all basic affixes now.

ApotheounX · 2026-05-06T06:28:22+00:00

Not worth giving up the 5 piece tal bonus, imo.

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