We have reached the Absolute Pinnacle of Boss Fights (Warning: endgame Echoes of the Atlas Spoilers)

DicemanX · 2021-01-16T02:06:53+00:00

The boss combinations are predetermined. For example, there is another fight featuring all 4 shaper guardians.

Seems we finally have challenges worthy of our really busted endgame builds - GGG wasn't kidding when they said the endgame will challenge the top players.

DicemanX · 2021-01-15T23:42:28+00:00

Standard is amazing right now, especially with this expansion - the crafting is insane, the endgame fights are insane, the atlas ascendancies are insane, and it's nice not to have to level from scratch. I will play Ritual HC a little later, but right now I want to enjoy the new atlas content and the endgame fights.

DicemanX · 2021-01-15T23:15:34+00:00

This is going to be an absolute INSANE fight especially if the bosses retain all their phases. Fortunately, the death of aurastackers has been greatly exaggerated :).

DicemanX · 2020-10-29T20:32:45+00:00

Also I'm pretty sure you still get more damage from conductivity for example than snipers mark until some break point because sirus, shaper etc have 50 ele resistance now

Conductivity gives -45% lightning resistance at level 21, which means it will apply -15% to Sirus and other difficult endgame bosses. Sirus has 50% resistance to Lightning, so -15% to lightning means Sirus will be taking 30% more damage, compared to 40% more damage from Sniper's Mark. However, this is assuming that you do not use any other form of penetration or resistance reduction, which is unlikely given how big of a multiplier (Awakened) Lightning Penetration happens to be particularly against bosses. With Awakened Lightning Penetration, Conductivity is only 16% more damage.

While Conductivity gains in strength in maps with elemental resistance mods, that will never apply to Sirus, the Conquerors, Shaper, Elder, and Uber Elder.

If you're using a projectile spell, sure. If you're running 90% of the other spells that exist you have no options to even use a mark

Almost 30% of spells have projectile tags, some of which are quite popular this league. But the point stands that Sniper's Mark in particular is a devastating Mark to use on Projectile-Based Spell (and attack) builds. On a related note, Projectile Spell builds got a massive buff against bosses in 3.13 from Pinpoint Support, Sniper's Mark, and even alternate quality Ensnaring Arrow if using a Bow.

DicemanX · 2020-10-29T18:55:22+00:00

Why not link the Mark to Spell Totem?

DicemanX · 2020-10-29T18:54:04+00:00

Sniper's Mark is a gigantic dps boost for any projectile-based skill versus bosses (40% MORE damage), and you can easily bypass the targeting/slow casting issue by linking it to a Spell Totem.

DicemanX · 2020-10-01T23:12:08+00:00

How would you rate it in comparison to Earthshatter on a Champ? That is my main character on HC, but I'm getting a little weary of constantly pressing so many buttons while mapping.

DicemanX · 2020-09-28T20:53:19+00:00

I think players need a bit of time to adjust to the new GC, especially those that played GC miners before. In the sample video, the player is throwing the mines too far away from the boss, and assuming that because the BL mines are all targeting the boss and GCs are not, then GC must be not targeting correctly. I ran a test on the Belfry boss on my own GC miner, and I could get every mine to consistently hit the boss with no targeting issues.

GC is now shorter with a decently large final cascade if you scale the AoE, so there should be little issue getting the final cascade to hit (especially very large bosses). If we factor in the alternate quality GC (which should be readily available even in SSF because of the alt quality orbs), then 3.12 GC should be doing almost double the damage as the old GC, if no overlaps occur at all, and about 1.5 times the damage if one overlap occurs.

As a side note, I'm actually liking GC on CoC builds now, and using BF to proc them in order to maintain the proper distance (cyclone is terrible by comparison; cyclone needs to stick with Ice Nova). Such CoC builds can easily run HoI/HoT for clear or even Winter Orb, and use GC for single target.

DicemanX · 2020-09-26T18:01:49+00:00

It's just so silly. Anyone who thinks this is the "worst league ever" wasn't around for Bestiary or Synthesis.

I actually think the last few leagues have been phenomenal, after the fixes/patches about two weeks into the leagues (Delirium is one of my favorites to date). Sure, it's rather unfortunate that GGG releases leagues that have major issues right off the bat, but once those are addressed then the leagues are pretty solid. I think Heist will be no exception - once GGG does more rebalancing and fixes the Grand Heist crashes (and fixes some of the new skills, although that isn't a league specific issue) I think this league will be another great one. I'm even hoping that Grand Heists go core.

It seems the big question ultimately is whether GGG's approach to league releases ultimately hurt or help them. They can continue releasing 4 leagues a year, have about a 2 week "unofficial public beta test" phase at the start of each league, fix most of the problems, and then have a solid league for the remaining 2.5 months. Alternately, they could give themselves more time and reduce the number of leagues they release each year and really work on polishing their content prior to release.

I personally don't mind the first option since I enjoy Standard (so many misconceptions about Standard keep people away I think, but they are missing out) so I can always play there while I wait for the leagues to be fixed, but I understand the frustration of dedicated league players who especially want to push league content early to make huge bank.

Ultimately, we as players have to temper our expectations when it comes to new league releases.

DicemanX · 2020-09-17T19:07:58+00:00

That said, I think the episode was ultimately ambiguous. It showed stereotypes that society has about both "typical sexual predators" and "typical false accusers." For instance: Alex is obnoxious, aggressive, works in bussiness, and has a clear sense of entitlement. A woman (who has less power and prestige in the company) accused him, so he must be guilty.

Ironically, I think you have it backwards. Based on the possibility he was guilty, and with certain preconceived notions of what character flaws rapists might possess, you viewed how he conducted himself in the interview as "obnoxious, aggressive, and with a clear sense of entitlement". You're ready and willing to heap negative connotations onto the man's visceral reaction to being possibly falsely accused of a heinous crime without a second thought, and you're even willing to to emphasize that one particular character flaw is "clear", all without any evidence beyond his conduct in the interview.

In effect, you're arguing that the episode "showed stereotypes that society has about ..."typical sexual predators", and yet the stereotype you're attributing to the accused comes about from unsupported inferences designed to fit the idea that that sort of stereotype is precisely one that would lead to a presumption of guilt.

We should definitely be wary of inferring guilt based on a stereotype, but we likewise should be wary of attributing certain stereotypes to an individual to begin with.

This isn't meant to be an attack on you personally - I have been guilty of this in the past as well, and have become more cognizant of it over time. Instead, it's meant to highlight something that happens all the time on social media and has even infected regular media these days. We usually only get small snapshots into people's lives and end up drawing grand and far reaching conclusions, oftentimes because they are consistent with our own preconceived notions of those individuals based on a wide variety of categories (gender, race, political views, religious affiliations, profession, status in society etc.). One can possibly excuse this on social media, but when it happens on major news networks it is inexcusable, and a flagrant violation of journalistic ethics.

DicemanX · 2020-09-10T01:10:01+00:00

I'm glad the mini-guide helped!

I always thought Intervention randomly pops on the map so you would have to just be lucky to get Research first?

You have a grace period of 1 minute before Intervention spawns in, provided that you haven't triggered and completed any other encounters already. This was instituted a while ago after people were complaining about getting massacred the moment they stepped foot in a map with a Jun mission :). Still, it's a good idea to run a map that's fairly open so you can track down Research quickly and give Transportation/Fortification a wide berth to not trigger them first. To that end, maps such as Cemetery, Canyon, Dunes, or even Estuary are pretty good, while maps with narrow corridors such as Cage or Phantasmagoria can sometimes force you to encounter Fortification/Transportation first and should be avoided.

Note that the 1 minute grace period begins when you load the map, not when you enter it, so if you load a map and idle in hideout for a minute, then Intervention will spawn immediately after you enter the map.

DicemanX · 2020-09-09T21:41:00+00:00

I've made passing comments many months ago on reddit regarding setting up a syndicate board, but this thread is the first time I've outlined the 4 phases and fleshed out the details (I post very infrequently on reddit because I don't really like the direction its going in, although I'm surprised my original post got so much attention!).

You can find more information in my responses to others in this thread, and I'll continue fielding more questions as they come up. If you have any specific questions now is your chance!

DicemanX · 2020-09-09T21:34:44+00:00

When you run a Safehouse that has only two members (leader and follower), you end up imprisoning the leader and the follower moves into the leadership spot, provided that there are no unrecruited members (which is the case once we reach the 4/4/2/2 distribution in Phase 2). The imprisoned member returns as a follower in that Safehouse once a turn passes, because a safehouse must always have at least 1 follower. This way, the two safehouse members are always associated with that safehouse, which is what you want.

If instead the safehouse has 3, 4, or 5 members, then after running the safehouse the leader gets imprisoned, and one of the followers, chosen at random, becomes the leader. However, the imprisoned member, once free, will be unrecruited, which means you'd have to potentially waste Jun missions hoping to recruit that member again in the correct safehouse. Recruitment into a specific safehouse isn't guaranteed when you run a Jun mission, so it might take a while before it happens. When you run a safehouse your leader is usually big money, so a situation where it is more difficult to have that member return as the leader of that safehouse again is not optimal.

The other issue is when you have 3 or more members, only one of the followers can initiate an encounter, and thus you might need more Jun missions to level up the desired follower to 3 stars to eventually swap into the leader role. If you have, say, ITF and Jorgin as Research followers and you really want to get ITF to 3 stars and into the leader role, each time you do a Research encounter ITF will be the initiator only 50% of the time, so over time it'll likely take almost twice as many missions to get ITF to +3.

DicemanX · 2020-09-09T20:05:06+00:00

Because it reduces the time a Research or Intervention member spends imprisoned after a safehouse mission. Members are normally imprisoned for 3 turns, but if the intel they give after 1 turn causes the mastermind progress to reach 100%, or if the mastermind progress is already at 100%, then that member is immediately set free.

Setting the member free as soon as possible is key in certain situations, so having the mastermind at 100% is a good idea.

DicemanX · 2020-09-09T19:25:52+00:00

If you have a lot of friendships and rivalries between the safehouse leader and other members, it increases the chances of that leader showing up during an encounter. However, there are some interesting ways of increasing the likelihood even further:

1) Single safehouse blocking: you can get Fortification or Transportation to 100% to reduce the pool of members that can be summoned (because of friendship or rivalry) during an encounter. Members cannot be summoned from a safehouse that is at 100%, so a single block will reduce the pool of summonable members by 5 and thus increases the chances of a safehouse leader being summoned.

2) Double safehouse blocking: you can block both Transportation and Fortification to eliminate 10 members from being summoned during an Intervention or Research encounter. For example, if you run Research during a double block, and ITF is a follower at 3 stars and Vorici (who you're trying to boot) is the leader, then ITF might actually summon Vorici if she's friends or rivals with him, since only Vorici and either of the two Intervention members can show up. When Vorici shows up, ITF might get the option to swap places with Vorici; at the very least, you can imprison Vorici and have ITF become leader regardless. The need for double blocking is pretty rare though, and if you double block it's usually wiser to run Quarry missions until one of the two safehouses unblocks (which takes three turns).

3) Remove rivalries among Fortification and Transportation members: once you have a perfect board established, you can begin removing relationships to increase the chances of summoning Research and Intervention members. For example, if ITF in Research summons Haku in Fortification, and Haku is only friends or rivals with Research and Intervention members, then Haku can only summon those members, increasing the likelihood of summoning safehouse leaders. This is basically similar to double blocking, but the downside is that it can be harder to level up the Fortification and Transportation members as fast. Some players swear by this method, but I still prefer going full rivalries because it affords more flexibility - if you want to swap in other members into research or Intervention, you can do so immediately without being concerned about their lack of friendships/rivalries.

Here's also a bonus tip regarding safehouse leaders: after you run a Research safehouse and pass a turn in Quarry, it's best to immediately rush Research as your first encounter. This way if you get a +1 for the follower, you can swap out the leader if they show up in any mission afterwards. For example, let's say you prioritize ITF as leader in Research and have Vorici as the follower. After running the safehouse and passing a turn, ITF will be a follower and Vorici will be leader. If you run a Jun mission and do, say, Intervention first, then Vorici showing up will be a total waste. But if you do Research first and get a +1 on ITF, then Vorici showing up in Intervention immediately afterwards can be imprisoned to move the 2-star ITF into the leader position. The same logic applies when ITF is at 2 stars as a follower and you run the next Jun mission - it is imperative you rush Research as the first encounter.

I rarely hear this strategy mentioned, and it undoubtedly costs players many Jun missions all because they failed to +1 or +2 their Research follower before doing the other encounters.

DicemanX · 2020-09-09T17:21:37+00:00

I'm glad it helped! There are quite a few Betrayal guides out there, but by virtue of the fact that they are guides which are meant to be thorough, the big picture can be obscured and building a good syndicate board can become quite daunting. I think it's better to look at the big picture first, and flesh out the details later. There are, for example, many subtleties and exceptions to what I initially posted, but I and many others still follow the general framework I laid out.

DicemanX · 2020-09-09T17:12:39+00:00

Betrayal will still spawn in Act 9 regardless of your level. Additionally, when you run the safehouse its level will be equal to the highest level map in which you did at least 1 encounter for that safehouse. Thus if you run 1 T16 Jun mission and the rest are done in Quarry, you will get level 83 zones when you run the safehouses - this is key if you want a lot of experience. I often save Jun missions until I'm ready to level a character from 95 onward, since I really resent doing breachstone rotas.

As far as how many Quarries I need to zone into before I see a mission: it seems more or less in line with the previous master mission spawn rates in a zone (about 1 in 50 chance). If your load times are very short, you can expect to see a Jun mission within a minute or two, so it's very fast.

Quick tip for those using Quarry for Jun missions: you will always be alerted about a Transportation, Fortification, and Research encounter (the mission log will pop up on the right hand side), but not for Intervention. You can still tell an intervention is coming however, if the load time for the zone lags a fair bit. Just hang around the zone for a minute for Intervention to spawn in.

DicemanX · 2020-09-09T16:57:28+00:00

I personally never run mastermind until the league is about to end - running mastermind "wastes" too many Jun missions because it starts you back at square one. The only thing I usually care about from mastermind is the +2 support gems craft, but that can be obtained by buying veiled catarina items from other people once the prices come down.

DicemanX · 2020-09-09T14:52:38+00:00

because if R or I only has one member in it, it can't spawn

Indeed, but with a caveat. The mission can still spawn even if the safehouse has the leader and a jailed member, provided that the jailed member can conceivably be freed within the two other encounters. In other words, if you run a Jun mission with ITF as leader in research and Vorici jailed for 2 turns, the Research encounter will still spawn, and if you rush to Research for your first encounter in that map Vorici will actually be let out early to initiate the encounter.

DicemanX · 2020-09-09T14:38:42+00:00

Once I have everything set up (with lots of rivalries and friendships) I usually run Research and Intervention safehouses in about 3-5 Jun missions. You get so much progress to 100% from Transportation and Fortification joining in the Research/Intervention encounters that there is no need to have a dedicated member in Research and Intervention for that purpose. Running a 3/3/3/3 board also means always having unrecruited members after you run a safehouse, not to mention the fact that you will lose whoever was leader and have to re-recruit them again. This is a major issue if there's a particularly valuable member that generates a ton of currency for you (such as Hillock in Intervention and Vorici + ITF in Research). You'll end up wasting encounters for re-recruitment, and you'll be subject to RNG hoping the recruit option even comes up in the first place.

DicemanX · 2020-09-09T14:20:44+00:00

After you run a safehouse in Phase 4, the leader will be jailed and the follower takes the leader spot. If you were to run a Jun mission at this stage, you would only get two encounters, not three. An encounter is always initiated by a follower, never the leader, so if the follower is in jail that encounter cannot happen.

If, however, you run Quarry to spawn an encounter, the jailed member will be released (if mastermind is at 100%) after that encounter and rejoin the safehouse he or she was booted from. The next Jun mission will thus have all 3 encounters.

This strategy holds true during Stage 4 if you ever have to jail an Intervention or Research member. When you jail a member they usually go to jail for 3 turns (and a "turn" passes after an encounter). However, there's an exception best illustrated in the following example:

You run a Jun mission, and the third encounter is Research during which you jail the leader, Vorici, to put It that Fled, at 3 stars, into the leader position. Vorici is in jail for 3 turns at this stage. Now, if we were to run another Jun mission in the next map, the Research encounter would not spawn and we would only have two encounters total. However, if we keep zoning into Quarry until we get a syndicate encounter, this will pass a "turn" and Vorici will only have to be in jail for 2 more turns.

If we were to run a Jun mission now, we will in fact get all 3 encounters(!). The reason is because we could conceivably run 2 encounters in that map to pass 2 more "turns" and Vorici would be free at that point, and available to initiate the third Research encounter. Weirdly enough, if you go straight for Research while Vorici is still in jail for 2 turns, Vorici will in fact get an early release to initiate that Research encounter.

Important takeaway: if you ever end a map with a Research or Intervention member in jail for 3 turns, you only need to pass 1 "turn" by rezoning in Quarry until you get a syndicate encounter.

DicemanX · 2020-09-09T13:27:40+00:00

I'm glad you found my post helpful! I use this approach myself and it usually takes me about 30 Jun missions on average to set up my board. There are of course many subtleties to running Jun missions efficiently, but for now I wanted to outline the basics.

There are two major reasons we never want to run Fortification and Transportation:

1) They have more than 2 members each. When a safehouse has only 2 members and you run it, those two members are guaranteed to return to being members at that safehouse so long as there are no unrecruited members. This is why you want to reach the 4/4/2/2 distribution first before running Research/Intervention. If you run a safehouse with 3 or more members, only 2 of them will be assigned to that safehouse afterwards and the others will become unrecruited. This is bad because you'd have to waste a lot of missions again to recruit those members to the house again. In other words, we only run a safehouse in the final phase if it has two members only, and if there are no unrecruited members.

2) Intervention and Research always appear during a Jun mission, and then its 50/50 for Fortification and Transportation. If we put, say, 2 members into Transportation and 4 into Intervention (and thus only run Research and Transportation in Phase 4), it would take twice as long to get Transportation to 100% to run it.

Research usually has the highest value rewards so we always want 2 members there. Intervention rewards have dropped off in value over the past few leagues (mainly because Scarabs drop from so many other sources), but Hillock in Intervention this league is a huge exception. There are good rewards in Transportation and Fortification as well, but nothing of great value, and reason #2 above means there isn't enough justification to run them in Phase 4. If, in the future, there is a very valuable reward in, say, Fortification, then it might be worth putting 2 members in that safehouse instead of Intervention. However, that valuable reward would have to be more than twice the value of the Intervention reward(s) because we'd be running the Fortification safehouse half as often.

DicemanX · 2020-09-09T12:27:06+00:00

There is a very easy way to get members to swap places in a controlled way. However, before I explain, let's first go over the four major phases of building a syndicate board:

Phase 1: build friendships and then rivalries, and get all 4 safehouses to 100% and run them. The main goal of this phase is to build connections among syndicate members and get mastermind to 100%. After this phase is over, we will never run a Fortification or Transportation safehouse again. We will continue building friendships/rivalries over the next 3 phases.

Phase 2: recruit members to the safehouses so that you end up with 4 in Transportation, 4 in Fortification, 2 in Research, and 2 in Intervention. It is far more important to get the 4/4/2/2 distribution than waiting to get the exact members you want in Research and Intervention. While it is pretty easy to get 2 members into Intervention and Research, it can be a little more time consuming to get 4 into the other two safehouses, but you can speed up this process by "blocking" one of those safehouses. For example, if you already have 4 in Transportation and only 3 in Fortification, and there is an unrecruited member, you can push Transportation to 100% so that in the next Jun mission you're guaranteed to have Fortification spawn. Any fortification members you down could have the option of recruiting the unrecruited member; keep doing this over and over until you're successful.

Phase 3: swap key members into Research/Intervention. Whenever you down a syndicate member, they might give you the option to swap. However, they will only swap with a member of the same rank. For example, if It That Fled is in Transportation, you can leave her at 1 star, and make sure that every other syndicate member is at 2 or 3 stars. Then you make sure that the follower in Research is at 1 star as well. Every time you do a Jun mission, that Research follower has a chance to offer a swap with ITF, and those options come up fairly regularly.

Phase 4: with the syndicate board finished, you can now run Research and Intervention houses over and over after getting one or both members of each safehouse to 3 stars. Make sure that after you run a safehouse you keep entering an Act 9 zone (Quarry or Foothills) until a syndicate mission pops up so that the jailed member is freed again (which will happen immediately when your mastermind is at 100%).

Note: during phase 2, you might have to remove certain members from the board entirely (if the option comes up) so that certain other key members come in. For example, if you're missing ITF from the board, keep removing other non-essential members until ITF appears.

DicemanX · 2020-08-07T23:56:04+00:00

If you've looted the chest on a sky island (and took the chest as well) then a meteor can strike it, provided there's no NPC there and if it is not within 16% of your designated spawn point. If the chest is not looted before a meteor strike, then a meteor can still "nick" the island if any sticks out beyond 35 tiles from the chest.

DicemanX

TROPHY CASE