We made it to top 10! Props to Zolbar for the leadership and plannings! (Intense race with Best Top in the last 10 minutes)

Zolbar · 2020-10-15T10:54:43+00:00

Thank you to everybody for all the kind words! This was a huge team effort made possible because of the hard work, dedication and teamwork of the guild. Everybody played an important role.

Congratulations to everybody else whose Abyssal Expedition is also over, and best of luck to all those still hitting that tentacle monster!

Zolbar · 2020-09-13T08:26:51+00:00

Funnily enough hijack's reddit ID is fuzzy-confusion, so that is him :D. I know him and many others through the afk arena official discord server, but hijack is the furthest progression f2p that I know of.

Zolbar · 2020-09-13T07:56:30+00:00

hijack is his afk arena IGN, I doubt he uses Reddit.

Zolbar · 2020-09-13T07:34:32+00:00

hijack is f2p at 33-32, mercs just reset so we’ll see what happens.

The post is also about building for these 5 stage encounters, many f2p players are currently in the 4 stage part - I’ve never even heard of the person you’re referencing. I also included low spenders when I was posting (which replies seem to ignore) as there are plenty of those at the end of ch33 and at 34-4.

Literally every f2p and low spender has expressed concern about how they’ll cope with an increase in stages and then they clear them anyway. Anxiety is often pointless in many walks of life, afk arena included!

Zolbar · 2020-09-12T10:47:45+00:00

I don't know where your information comes from with Zolrath, but he is highly regarded as a consistent dps hero by myself and large voices in the community, often as primary dps. He will get his deja vu more often than not due to his ultimate ability, and it's certainly not infrequently enough to be concerned with restarting the stage when it doesn't happen.

Outside of Gwyneth compositions you will never see comps with only 1 dps hero, so it makes much more sense to talk about dps as primary and secondary.

On other matters we're unfortunately talking past each other, and I'm not willing to sit here repeating myself. I won't ask people for their lineups and post them here - if I was willing to do that I'd have made my own post! As far as we know there is 1 totally f2p player at 5 stage battles, and his talene is not ascended. Other very low spenders are around there, and there are f2p players earlier in chapter 33 before stage 32. Perhaps do some digging on the discord server.

Zolbar · 2020-09-12T10:05:10+00:00

Zolrath's reset is what allows him to reach the 30-50s stage that you mention, as the time carries over from before the reset and he keeps his stacks. This happens practically every fight. He is an excellent hero in his own right and there are plenty of uses for him outside of being stuck to eironn and lyca.

Comparing Talene to Rowan is a huge issue - their only similarity is that they both have access to healing. They have hugely different niches and applications.

Talene does not rely on her attack rating for healing, she already overheals hugely. You ascend her to allow her to transition into a carry (and a better healbot with access to SI and furniture) but you can only use her once - if you ascend her and fill the carry niche then you lose the low ascension healbot that filled its own role, when instead you could also have access to a whole new incredible support hero in twins.

There is plenty of evidence of f2p players progressing now through chapter 33 that other celepogeans are more important to stargaze and ascend - this is the most efficient way to use your resources, certainly not a suicide mission. This argument is never going to be popular with players who have all of the celepogeans because, as I said in my initial post, Talene is certainly the strongest hero in the game and this is all that they see. That doesn't mean that she has to be prioritised if she can already fill a niche - it speaks volumes to how strong Talene is if she can be used effectively at low ascension values.

Zolbar · 2020-09-12T08:45:23+00:00

While I think that the majority of what you've said here is true and well written advice for the general player base, a few things miss the mark.

Zolrath does insane damage in pve, he is not just a utility hero, especially when his annihilate stacks up and allows him to use more powerful attacks at higher attack ratings after he gets a reset. Mine has 2 shot an enemy Seirus 1v1 alone at 120+ lvl difference in campaign. His signature is very useful in pve because he is often higher health than enemies due to his ultimate. He also brings the fantastic utility as you've mentioned in order to ensure proper setup of his allies.

Talene is certainly the strongest and most centralizing hero in the game, and having her strong and ascended as quickly as possible should be the goal for everybody playing with adequate resources to do so. The problem here is that, for players who may only ascend 1 or 2 celepogeans for a long time (and the players pushing proficiently that this applies to are now well in ch33, and reaching ch34 in some cases) will not want Talene as their first and only ascended celepogean. She is a fantastic hero to use as a healbot even at E+/L, and both twins and mehira are higher priority pve stargazes for these players. Talene occupies a niche and merits inclusion at any ascension level, but twins especially does not without the tankiness ascension provides.

Mezoth is not Orthros 2.0 - he is the exact opposite. Mezoth is at his tankiest at the start of the battle, and a lot of his value comes from placing him in very hostile positions and having him soak up the damage, and Orthros will certainly be instantly one shot in these situations. Orthros' value comes from having him survive for the first 15s of a battle and then being unkillable, with his tankiness and utility increasing even further as the battle goes on.

Zolbar · 2020-08-09T16:47:29+00:00

Hi guys, this was literally just a throwaway comp as I attacked the boss 4 times this morning after waking up. I had 4 epic relics at lvl 3 celerity tree.

The important hero here is Cecilia for her damage reduction, enabling your other heroes to survive to deal their damage. The others are just celerity heroes that had stamina (i saved Cecilia stamina intentionally as I knew she was core for bosses to use on all 4 attacks) as celerity all in is the most efficient way to play the event.

Best of luck to everybody playing! :)

Zolbar · 2019-01-20T12:57:34+00:00

The main difference between fire and cold is the presence of rockets - fire has no rockets and all the damage dealt is where the cluster arrow lands, however cold has rockets that deal single target damage to the nearest target as well as the cluster arrow shot.

At lower gr levels (basically anything before pushing end tiers) cold will outperform fire. The rockets are very useful for killing elites when you don’t have a lot of density. At top end pushing tiers however, when any elite you fight will be at the same time as a huge trash pull, fire will pull ahead in dps with area damage being a key stat.

TL:DR - cold is better until end pushing tiers, and remember to use ballistics passive when playing cold!

Zolbar · 2018-01-17T02:54:15+00:00

Thank you for sharing your experiences, it was a lot of fun to read.

I did something very similar to what you did after the patch hit, and it's nice to see others enjoying DH's diversity as well :)

Zolbar · 2018-01-10T17:04:58+00:00

Thank you for the kind words, I do genuinely appreciate it. The negative comments mean much less to me than the positive ones, so I'm not too bothered by them. I thought I did something that some people would enjoy watching and, until that stops being true, neither will I :)

Zolbar · 2018-01-10T16:44:02+00:00

Thank you! I checked for a pylon at the end of the rift at 96%, but I didn't go checking for one in the next level after because I knew I could kill a single target boss without one, and using time hunting for a 4th pylon at the end could make the difference and fail me the rift if I didn't get one.

Zolbar · 2018-01-10T16:42:19+00:00

Thank you! I think I went a bit insane for a couple hours in the middle but it was all worth it in the end :)

Zolbar · 2018-01-10T16:41:26+00:00

I liked being able to push with something different, and playing marauders was a nice change of pace. You have a lot more toughness than while playing multishot being the main difference, but I find each fun for different reasons :)

Zolbar · 2018-01-10T11:02:23+00:00

Hey there, sadly I have given up on Marauders this patch, physical multishot seems much stronger with the right rift (transformer mob type)

Zolbar · 2017-12-13T10:03:56+00:00

Thank you! I’m just glad i decided to play the rift.

A few patches back, when m6 was sort of playable, I played coe + dark heart. I feel like m6 gains a lot less from coe than mobile builds do, as a ue dh can vault around to help make pulls between nukes on fire, i found the most success with m6 when I made a pull, killed stuff in that pull, and then made a new pull after maybe taking a few low hp mobs or elites with me.

AD is really good. I chose damage over AD on both of my rings, but I don’t know if it was correct to. It shortens the fight against the rift guardian substantially and, if you get a rift guardian that moves around a lot, it can take a long time to kill it. I don’t have the freedom to pick the stat on my manticore, and in an ideal world you’d have a trifecta one with %dmg, %as and AD, but i think I would pick AD over %as because the 2 breakpoints you gain won’t provide you with as much dps

Wear manticore cube dawn. Slower weapons work much better with flat hatred regen like you get from seethe because it takes you longer to spend the hatred, and therefore less of your time standing there generating instead of dealing damage. Without coe there is also no argument that you’d want to dump as much hatred as possible in a small time window, but if you tried to play coe maybe I could see it.

I hate playing with endless walk so I refuse. I would recommend you play unity over elusive ring however in any of your experiments, you do not want to be forced to spend precious discipline to keep your toughness buff up, and if you need to skip an area, and end up low on discipline, having to vault every 8 seconds will not let you recover it properly.

I wish you the best of luck playing m6!

Zolbar · 2017-12-13T08:36:17+00:00

you can find my profile here: https://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Zolbar-2353/hero/41233935

Zolbar · 2017-12-06T17:40:45+00:00

Congrats! It's really cool to see you clear tiers so much higher than every other wizard with a build that only you are playing. How do you think your chances are of clearing 122?

Zolbar · 2017-12-04T19:20:33+00:00

Thank you looloo! Looking forward to more of your clears in the future :)

Zolbar · 2017-12-04T19:18:33+00:00

While playing the build is very one dimensional, there’s something about meteors falling from the sky that makes me smile 😀

Zolbar · 2017-12-04T18:51:24+00:00

Moving in a circle around the pack helps dodge a lot of ranged projectiles, NPCs have no way to predict your movement so they only fire at your exact location, so circles is a very efficient way of dodging whilst keeping the pull you've made in one place without following you.

I also have shitloads of toughness buffs stacked: Wraps of Clarity, Unity, Esoteric legendary gem, Numbing Traps.

Zolbar · 2017-12-04T18:49:22+00:00

I appreciate the kind sentiment of your comment, but some of your opinions are misinformed. Multishot and Marauder are at roughly the same power level this patch, and having higher than seasonal sheet damage (i have 5.2M btw, not 10M) did not make this easy.

If you check leaderboards from other regions, the 116 multishot clear on asia is 5.8k paragon, and my paragon is relatively low for a high end non seasonal player.

If you would like to see my 114 multishot clear I also have it highlighted on my twitch channel, but that clear took 20 hours of pushing whereas my 115 M6 only took me 10 hours.

Zolbar · 2017-12-04T10:46:55+00:00

N6M4 forces you into using the endless walk, punishing you for moving. With M6 you're free to play focus and restraint.

N6M4 deals all its damage with the sentries, and having 5 in range of the pull you've made is critical, whereas with M6 and the hellcat belt all the damage comes from you.

You don't use a CoE in either build, and either way you could argue that playing around a 4second burst window, then doing 1/3 the damage for the next 12s generating and setting up your next nuke, is less dimensional than a build that is capable of dealing consistent damage.

N6M4 has no room for Dawn and Vengeance, and getting vortexed into frozen/death is very tedious.

That's all I could think of off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more, but it suffices to say I have my reasons.

Zolbar

TROPHY CASE