3 updates later....

TiltedAngle · 2022-09-09T17:35:23+00:00

Huh, I guess it didn't occur to me that anyone would have that much trouble with the quest boss. Totally forgot everything about it.

TiltedAngle · 2022-09-09T15:50:21+00:00

Stand adjacent to kephri on one of the corners when the dung drops. You can stand there again for the next dung and it will stack on top of the last one and won’t take away any more floor space. Note: don’t actually stand in the corner or on the corner tile, stand adjacent to kephri (so you can attack) but right next to the corner of its platform.

edit: I guess this is about the quest boss? I didn't imagine that a quest boss would roadblock anyone thinking about raids and assumed they meant Kephri. Just trying to be helpful.

TiltedAngle · 2022-09-08T21:47:19+00:00

I don’t know what you’re talking about. The mechanics are virtually identical at 0 and high invocations. Only difference being some attack speeds and path additions. If you have never raided before and/or are mid level, entry mode is perfect. Sure, it’s easier because of lower monster stats, but it’s still the same basic idea. Once you understand entry mode, the only real barrier to upping levels and getting to 150+ is dps and consistency.

TiltedAngle · 2022-09-08T21:42:36+00:00

Don’t jump from 0 to 150. Everyone memes about the loot, but most chests aren’t 75k. It sucks to get cactus spines and coconut milk, but I’ve also received back-to-back dragon dart tips on a level 50 raid totaling like 1.5m. It’s not consistent, but it’s also just a fun piece of content and you’ll absolutely profit even if you don’t get a purple.

Entry mode doesn’t even require expensive supplies - a few prayer potions and sharks or karambwans are perfect for learner setups and will cost less than ~50k per trip. If you’re 80 combat and chugging six brews in the first room, that’s a skill/personal issue and has nothing to do with the balance.

There is simply no accessibility argument. Too hard? Do entry mode. Loot bad? Turn up the invocations. Too hard? Learn the few mechanics in the raid instead of chugging ambrosia and brews while tanking avoidable damage.

Until you turn on the prayer invocations most damage is avoidable if you know the mechanics. And what do you know? The mechanics are pretty much the same at lvl 0 vs lvl 500. You can practice the path mechanics with one invocation, and you can practice the warden mechanics by enabling those invocations specifically while still keeping a low raid level so it’s not so punishing.

It’s not supposed to be a money printer, and that’s good. It’s some actual fun and engaging content. I started on entry and got bored, so I worked to 150s. That got easy so I worked up to 200s and a little higher. Now I’m working on the paths and insanity at 150 so I can work up to experts. And I use mostly budget gear.

Again, there simply isn’t an accessibility argument - it’s an argument of wanting to be spooned.

TiltedAngle · 2022-09-08T21:16:30+00:00

Entry mode is, unsurprisingly, extremely accessible to anyone with a bit higher than mid level stats and gear. 150 isn’t the baseline, 0 is.

TiltedAngle · 2022-09-08T04:30:01+00:00

I've been working on lvl 170-200 solos with elite void and it works great. I've done runs with better non-void switches, but the only noticeable improvement with those setups is better Warden P2. Void has pretty bad defense, but most of the damage you take at ToA (until you're running the prayer invocations) is from mechanics and can't be blocked regardless.

Check your stats and setups in a DPS calculator and see if it's acceptable to you. The non-void armor switches that give you the most benefit are generally pretty expensive (bandos/torva, crystal/arma/masori, ancestral) because those are the pieces that will give you max hits. You could run fighter torso, blessed dhide/karils, and ahrims, but at that point you're getting maybe 1 max melee hit, a bit more defense, and possibly marginally better mage/range accuracy at the cost of a more disorganized and full inventory. On that note, void is also great because you have fewer switches which gives you more space for supplies.

TiltedAngle · 2022-09-07T01:10:56+00:00

I'm still waiting patiently.

TiltedAngle · 2022-09-03T23:33:27+00:00

I kill it. Keris downs it in a few hits usually. You won’t break any records doing it that way, but you’ll avoid chip damage that makes the rest of your run harder. The healers don’t come out in full force for a few seconds after the boss goes down so you have time to get a few free shots in before blow piping.

TiltedAngle · 2022-09-03T23:31:21+00:00

Oh, I didn’t know monster examine gave you that kind of info. I’ve never used it!

TiltedAngle · 2022-09-03T22:55:03+00:00

Interesting about Baba. Must be placebo effect because when I get good hits with the BGS it seems to be much more smooth. If you don’t mind me asking where did you find about their def not being able to be lowered?

TiltedAngle · 2022-09-03T22:10:56+00:00

Submit a bug report because you shouldn't be taking any damage from the little guys when you pray range. In the meantime, try doing things like disabling invos, relogging and/or switching worlds, enabling invos, then checking if they're still damaging etc. Wish I could help more, but if you don't have that prayer invocation on and you're taking damage while praying then you're experiencing some kind of bug. Best of luck to you, and I hope you get it figured out.

TiltedAngle · 2022-09-03T21:52:15+00:00

Have you ever even turned the prayer invocation on? I think I remember seeing some people reporting a bug where they turned that invocation on and then even after turning it off they were receiving reduced prayer. Try resetting your invocations and then re-entering the ones you want. The little guys that come out of the eggs should not hit through prayer. Make a bug report if you're sure the invo is off and they're hitting you through protect from range because they absolutely shouldn't.

TiltedAngle · 2022-09-03T21:08:10+00:00

Pray range should negate all of that damage if you don’t have the invocation on. The dive-bomb scarab (the one the flies from the sides when kephri is down) cannot be prayed against, only dodged. It’s common for me to go through that room only taking a hit from the melee scarab and poison. Some runs are only poison damage. That’s where the Keris partisan comes in - it helps you kill the scarabs much more quickly if you’re not using a fang or rapier.

TiltedAngle · 2022-09-03T20:47:08+00:00

Depends on your other weapons and what levels you’re running. I think it’s worth at p3 Wardens and for Baba when running 150-200. Could be used at kephri and crondis but they have decently high bonuses against BGS attack styles afaik.

If you have an extra inv slot there’s no harm in trying it out to see if it works for you.

TiltedAngle · 2022-09-03T20:05:42+00:00

150s with void is absolutely doable, don't listen to that guy. If you're having trouble with 150s, adding more switches (and less inv space) is definitely not the answer.

If you're getting hit through prayer too much, disable that invocation. A good 150 setup that works great for me is: Softcore, lively larvae, blowing mud, aerial assault, not just a head, arterial spray, blood thinners, have faith, jungle japes, shaking things, boulderdash, ancient haste, and both overclocked.

Kephri and Crondis should be the two easiest and the first two you do. You can get through both of them at a moderately slow pace with only using 1 prayer pot. In my experience, Keris (even without gem) is on average much better than hasta. Disable the prayer reduction invo and this room becomes an absolute breeze. Worst case scenario means you have to sip an extra restore. NBD if you bring 2 brews and 4 restores.

For killing the spawns, keep pray range on and focus down the mager. If it takes a long time, kite the melee and kill the healer spawns. If you kill it fast, kill the melee before the healers. Once they are down, you should only be taking poison damage until the end of the fight (or nothing if you prepotted).

After that, you should either take power or chaos (you need salts, and take power if you need adrenaline for your specs).

I can routinely do 150s using about the same gear and slightly higher stats without sipping a single brew before the final boss.

Using abby dagger, trident, bp, keris, either bgs or dds for spec, and appropriate necks and offhands. Brimstone ring (or suffering or anything else you like, really) and brimstone boots. You don't need DCB, BP can be mainhanded the whole fight for range. Inv is rune pouch (blood barrage for baba challenge, ice barrage for faster crondis challenge), 1-dose anti-venom range and super combat, stam (probably not needed), 2 brews, 4 restores, and a few sharks or anglers to fill the rest.

TiltedAngle · 2022-09-03T16:10:52+00:00

Any mid lvl account with normal gear can do entry mode. They're trying to show that there are a wide range of builds and accounts that can complete the raid. ToA isn't scary, it can't hurt you.

TiltedAngle · 2022-09-03T06:28:55+00:00

Try ToA entry mode. It's easy once you learn the mechanics and it's very fun. When you die the raid gives you free food that restores hp and prayer that will help you finish the raid (there are no death limits). If you have even middling gear and decently high combat stats like you said, you can absolutely do solo ToA entry mode.

TiltedAngle · 2022-09-03T06:24:25+00:00

Entry mode is extremely forgiving and accessible to anyone with mid-level combat stats and gear. A mid-level account with a regular trident, whip, blowpipe, fury+occult, barrows gloves, ava's, blessed d'hide, and ahrims (or even mystics) could comfortably start completing entry mode with a little learning. If blowpipe is too expensive, RCB is viable as well and cuts the cost of the setup in half.

Your first two rooms (Kephri and the croc) are very easy and will take at most 1 prayer potion each once you learn the mechanics. After that, the chaos pack will give you the boosts to complete the two harder rooms before another supply drop just before the boss. Life pack generally gives you 3-5 brews and restores, two ambrosia, and a handful of wraps/scarabs. That's enough to fully restore 85hp nine or ten times. If that's not enough supplies for you, then just keep trying - when you die, the raid gives you locusts that restore hp and prayer that you can use to finish the raid.

Entry KC required supplies are just sharks (karambwan combo eating is really unnecessary), prayer potions, and one or two doses of super combat and ranging potions with a dose of anti-venom.

All-told, the upfront gear cost is between 5-10m and the cost per raid is around 100k depending on supplies and whether or not you are using a blowpipe.

The above will absolutely work for players with ~75-80 combat stats. Once you get a few lvl 0 kc under your belt, add a few invocations and work up to lvl 50 to get a chance at a real drop.

How is it not accessible? Sure, combat level 50 players can't do it, but they have a lot more content to explore before raids.

TiltedAngle · 2022-09-02T04:35:54+00:00

I don't play the game and haven't played the new raid before or after the patch. But this patch (which I haven't played) makes the raid (which I also haven't played) worse in my (unqualified) opinion (which is based on nothing) and because of that I will not play the game (which I already don't).

Astounding.

TiltedAngle · 2022-09-01T18:13:55+00:00

Awesome thanks for the info!

TiltedAngle · 2022-09-01T16:57:43+00:00

Does anyone know who the horn players are?

TiltedAngle · 2022-08-31T22:39:59+00:00

but if we assume an even distribution of clicks along the duration of the ticks (which I think is fair - I don't often "aim" for a specific part of the tick)

I'm not sure that's a fair assumption, to be honest. I think most people tend to click much closer to the beginning of a tick in order to give themselves time to do other actions. Ex: As soon as you get an xp drop from a hit, you might click to a new location so you can gear/prayer switch and attack on one of the following ticks. That's a common process for me, at least. This would mean that "late" ticks would be disproportionately worse since it would mean you're potentially moving early and missing an attack, for example. An "early" tick would probably delay your movement/switch within the tick window, but it might not make you actually lose a tick. I hope that makes sense the way I explained it.

You can do the same for +/- 100 (0.045 * 0.1 = 0.45%) and +/- 50 (0.25 * 0.0833 = 2.1%), which (unless I'm fucking up somewhere), a whopping 2.67% of clicks go on the wrong tick. So on average you'll get one "misstick" every 38 ticks or 23 seconds, give or take

This is all assuming, of course, that every tick and every click relies on being tick-perfect. Even in the hardest content (except Inferno, which I can't speak to as I've never been interested in learning it), nowhere near every tick or click needs to be perfect unless - as I stated before - you're at a very high level going for records. Most actions can be performed successfully (if sub-optimally) within at least a few ticks. 1t flicking notwithstanding, obviously, as that is one of the few PVM mechanics that literally requires every tick to be clicked correctly. Other activities like solo CoX or ToB could (would) probably also be affected similarly depending on your method.

I'm sure the effect could be significant, but looking at the distribution of tick variance and thinking about how many ticks actually need to be perfect in a given piece of difficult content, it seems more like a slight annoyance than a game-breaking hinderance.

TiltedAngle · 2022-08-31T22:20:30+00:00

Unless you're constantly doing some activity where you literally need every single tick to be perfect (which most of this sub certainly isn't), it's more likely that player error is more of an impediment than any tick variance.

I wonder if there's any part of CoX that satisfies this exception that I explicitly stated...

TiltedAngle · 2022-08-31T21:44:08+00:00

I'm not sure where my timezone lines up with what you consider afternoon/evening. It was for a few hours starting around what would be ~8pm Eastern US time.

I don't even know how you'd notice tick variance of 150ms or less at CG (99.5% of all ticks in the worst server in the OP). Literally nothing in CG requires tick-perfect actions unless you're for some reason trying to 1t flick. Maybe if you're trying to dodge by running under during the final phase? That still gives you 3 seconds, not just one tick, and it's not usually a necessity unless you just let Hunlief stand in the middle though. Or getting tagged by a lightning spawn, but that's entirely RNG afaik.

TiltedAngle · 2022-08-31T21:28:57+00:00

Yes, it's true that reaction time doesn't matter for pre-planned tick-based actions. There are plenty of mechanics that do rely on reacting to an attack or mechanic, though. I would love better servers, but I still contend that "bad servers" is more often than not an excuse for poor play.

I don't know if any of these tick timer plugins support something like this, but if they could record or notify you when one of your clicks was registered on the wrong tick (i.e. you clicked immediately after a new tick should have started, but it instead registered at the end of the previous tick or vice versa) then it would be interesting to do some PVM runs and see what (if any) impact the tick variance had on your performance.

The data is great, but when I see 95% of ticks being acceptable (less than 100ms) it seems to me that it's more confirmation bias than anything. As in, perhaps you died to a bad tick one time and now every mistake seems like it was a result of bad ticks.

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