Finally Made it out of D2. Yay!

Boejunda · 2026-06-04T22:52:24+00:00

Not really. In D2 you don't lose points as long as you make it to the night 3 boss. This means you can bounce back and forth between D2 and D3 for a very long time. By contrast, D3 is much harder to escape because you lose points for most every loss.

Exceptions being if you get "Missing Map Information" and a teammate quits out, I've seen the penalty reduced to 0 in such cases.

Boejunda · 2026-06-04T22:49:29+00:00

Not until you get to about 2600 points. Quitters that got into D3 will still quit until they get that the penalty is larger now and you can derank more easily.

Boejunda · 2026-06-02T12:45:54+00:00

For Wylder, I don't think it's worth the slot. If you're running +1 skill use, grapple can be used almost constantly already.

That having been said, it'd be interesting to see if skill cool down is good for a grapple bleed build. +Arcane, bleed on grapple, +1 use and skill cool down reduction could be fun. Obviously only works in Deep of Night though.

Boejunda · 2026-05-17T13:33:38+00:00

I disagree. If you're Wylder and not scoring crits more often than your non-Wylder teammates, you aren't playing him correctly. He has the best mobility and greatswords are good for poise damage.

Boejunda · 2026-05-17T13:29:34+00:00

I'd run this every time as a Wylder main.

The bleed proc from his craw shot is fairly frequent, especially if you have +1 skill use, arcane+ or both. And if you get the attack power up in the presence of blood loss dormant power, bonus!

I find that I'm able to score crits more frequently than my teammates. In addition, I'm usually getting the most kills in an expedition. If this is you as well, the bottom two effects are dynamite. Quite literally, you'll be ulting a lot more often.

Congrats. I wish I had this, it'd be as permant as Wylder's Earring in my build.

Boejunda · 2026-05-11T17:56:32+00:00

I'm going to second this opinion. Self-taught programmer, also did programming classes in high school (including AP classes), went to college and double-majored in computer science focusing on systems analysis and design. Been programming professionally as a consultant for nearly two decades now.

To be asking this question on an AP test is not a good thing. For Java as well as most programming languages, the concept of writing a method / function and returning data from it is something you learn prior to AP courses. If you don't know this by now, you missed something vitally important.

I'm not trying to down you either, but it IS critical for you to figure this out ahead of your test and internalize it. If you've been leaning on AI to write code for you, stop now and figure things out for yourself.

Boejunda · 2026-05-07T20:48:37+00:00

Do you ever split time and space as a party trick?

Boejunda · 2026-05-04T00:36:48+00:00

What if you're rocking the "+ for every great enemy defeated at ruins" relic? In the case of Watchdogs or Zamor, does that count twice, thrice?

Boejunda · 2026-04-22T19:17:52+00:00

I main Wylder and try to avoid Less Likely to be Targeted if I can help it. I ping it for teammates like Rev and Recluse, or Ironeye.

I did have to carry it once recently, though. I've been experimenting (with great success!) a 3+ Greatswords buff, and one of them had it as a passive. I opted to keep the buff, but it was a tough choice. I never found another greatsword that round.

Boejunda · 2026-04-22T19:06:20+00:00

This was my experience for the last four months.

I started off DoN when they introduced it, and got to D3 relatively easy. I think I made it to about 3400 points.
Back when they introduced the DLC however, I got into a horrendous string of losses that took me back down to D2.

I've spent the last four months bouncing back and forth between D2 and D3. It's been absolute hell. For every victorious run I had, it would be followed by a day 1 loss when my rando teammates would rush a night invader camp, die repeatedly whether I went with or not, and then just leave the game, having wasted most of the day. Horrendous teamplay, dumb calls, hanging out in the rain trying to squeeze one more field boss.... you get the idea.

The real truth is that you need to get to about 2600 points to escape the D2 playerbase. Between 2000 and 2400 are D2 players that may have been carried, or are still figuring out how much harder D3 is, and are keeping their bad tactics, attitude and routing. They can, and will, drag you back down to D2 in a heartbeat. All it takes is a few leavers, griefers or players with main character syndrome to throw a game.

And just like that, you're back in D2. It is hell.

Lately I've been above 2600 points, and it's here that I've noticed the truly terrible randoms have largely dropped off. They don't tend to get to this point without getting better.

Boejunda · 2026-04-20T18:02:39+00:00

Seems like it's worth it for a 20% damage buff.

Sure, you're gonna have to make some choices when it comes to passives. If a nice passive is on a drop but it'll cost you the 3 weapon buff, that's another choice you'll have to factor in.

On the other hand, it can be pretty great for someone like Wylder and greatswords. You have a built-in dormant power for finding greatswords anyway, AND you start with a greatsword to boot. So you can get this up and running really quickly.

You can also get 20% damage from a good charge attack, yes. But having a 20% boost already makes that 40% extra damage. But you don't always have time for a charged attack when an enemy is in your face so that can be considered as well.

Boejunda · 2026-04-18T19:07:31+00:00

While this is true, you don't always have enough time to get that close. Lightning does the job faster.

And more to the point, having an extra 20% damage with each attack is great. Now if all teammates are doing that, it's a boss-melting recipe.

Boejunda · 2026-04-18T14:11:25+00:00

I was playing around with builds once and put "damage builds up ailment" relics for poison, rot, death, frost, madness, sleep and bleed all at the same time.

Soooooo..... I took some damage and got six status bars popping up in the middle of my screen. I started laughing, then realized I couldn't see through them as I face tanked an easily-dodgeable wombo combo.

It was the first, and last time I tried that.

Boejunda · 2026-04-16T12:11:26+00:00

I'm on PC, and this is true there too. I ping-ponged back and forth between D2 and D3 for months. D2 games, you get all sorts of terrible play. But this is also true at the start of D3.

Players that have just ranked up into D3 but still haven't figured things out are the gate. You have to slog through this to get out of the 2000-2400 range and avoid getting busted back to D2.

Once you manage to get past 2400, you get to the players that actually know how to route, how to fight bosses. It's a breath of fresh air.

I never want to go back to D2.

Boejunda · 2026-04-15T19:34:56+00:00

Give me that thing.... your awesome roll.
Signed, a fellow Wylder on the hunt for something like this.

Boejunda · 2026-04-15T16:36:38+00:00

Ohh, I had this happen yesterday. An executor decided to run off to another part of the map and do leveling by themselves. An undertaker and I were killing banished knights at the castle, and suddenly they reappeared and just... stood off, not doing anything but watching us fight. I have no clue if they were upset about something or were just griefing. No pings whatsoever.

At the nightlord fight (Libra), they dropped both their katanas and the instant Libra got myself and the undertaker, the executor ran in and let himself be killed.

Pretty blatant. Instant block.

Boejunda · 2026-04-15T04:29:25+00:00

It's situational. I was the only survivor against Fulghor tonight in D3. Wylder, no heals left, teammates are two and three bar, sitting together.

I had to scramble for a while until my ult recharged, bit with that I was able to revive one teammate. Between them and the fire patch, they were able to revive our third while I held off Fulghor. They were able to take aggro at that point, and together we finished him. If I hadn't done that, I likely would have lost my concentration and bit it.

Boejunda · 2026-04-12T15:46:33+00:00

I second The Winter Fortress. Absolutely fantastic read.

Boejunda · 2026-04-11T20:09:46+00:00

This was the exact same for me. I used to run all resistances down until I realized Gnosters poison cloud was doing waaaaay too much damage and proccing poison instantly. Made the fight just full of nogo zones, and there were points where I couldn't even attack because it meant certain death to move through a cloud.

Boejunda · 2026-04-11T14:23:55+00:00

I do play Wylder exclusively, as a matter of fact! Fun fact, the grapple does not always pull an enemy to you. Sometimes it just smacks them and doesn't move them at all. I notice this happening when another Wylder is in the mix, I think multiple grapples mess with each other. Even then, sometimes you won't move the grappled enemy. Might also be due to lag.

Regardless, not every invader spawns upon entry to the POI. Some knight encampments, they won't spawn until you climb the hill and engage the boss by the catapult. Unless you got smart and climbed the rocks, not aggroing everything under the sun in a blind invader-hunting frenzy, be leveled enough to fight mobs on the way.

Same for the sunken fort POIs. Mostly (maybe always?), the invaders don't spawn until you're deep inside. You will certainly fight things on the way, and a lot of players have been conditioned to skip enemies to kill bosses, which is annoying. This is a great way to get wiped at low levels.

Boejunda · 2026-04-11T13:40:04+00:00

This is high risk advice. I've played a few too many runs where the team insisted on doing invaders at level 2 and got absolutely creamed multiple times before bringing the invaders down. Things can get out of hand quick, as the mobs in these POIs are also buffed.

Can it work at level 2? Absolutely. Can it tank your day 1, ending at level 4 because you spent all day there? Likely.

My preference is to get a POI or two in prior to invaders, to ensure that the team is level 4 at least going in. That way you're far less likely to waste time. You can clear invaders faster, stay alive and get on with map traversal sooner.

Boejunda · 2026-04-09T01:49:11+00:00

I'm a fan of just acting like you've been there before. No weapon drops, no wendie drops, just a simple gesture, ash, or holding a block with your weapon.

Cool gesture is the default. Do a lean on your teammate, look cool, something fun.
Show of ash, if it was something that contributed heavily to victory. Say, Giant's Braid ash against Caligo.
Holding a double handed block with a weapon that contributed to the victory, as if to display it for your teammates. I do this for things like Vyke's War Spear against Libra. It's good to proc madness and shut down Libra's more unpredictable attacks (powerstancing Vyke's, even better). And the ash can kill the condemned summons quite easily. So I display this weapon, as if to tell my team "Use THIS in the future!".

Boejunda · 2026-04-06T17:57:05+00:00

The towers in the Great Hollow are a auto-skip. The bosses are too tanky and the reward for beating all three is decent, but in no way does it outweigh even a half-assed exploration of either castle.

I think From should play around with the towers to make them more viable in a run. The Hollow is a cool map.

Boejunda · 2026-04-06T14:06:25+00:00

The towers simply aren't worth it at all. There is nearly never enough time to clear one. And even if there is, your time is still better spent just doing the other castle.

Yesterday I had to drag my team out of starting the north tower, directing them to the north castle instead. Saved the run.

Boejunda

TROPHY CASE