Light at the end of the tunnel

moving away from you at speed c.

It gets a lot better after lightning trap! (play tested as witch trapper in 2h solo race)

I fail at descent champions

Previous post

So I put together a build plan for a shadow (I thought it'd be easiest to rank) and decided to go for it. First try, got killed at Kuduku. Go figure. Second try, ditto. Third try, I actually got past there, went into obelisks of faith, and got killed by the goatmen. By this point, I'm thinking something's a bit wrong, so maybe let's rerun the old build and see what I'm missing?

The old build was Scion, 2h ST with fire trap support, except the way I played it was actually a great deal more like fire trap with 2h ST support, at least in the early part. Every skill point went toward ST, so it made sense that it moved away eventually, but I thought why not go for firetrap? But anyway, I rolled a scion, it was easy, and I learnt something!

- I learnt that the limit of 3 traps at once is pretty annoying. I probably also spam them a little too much. And I'm pretty sure now that trap positioning is important in order not to waste traps.
- Traps of all kinds work on Kuduku, but it's a lot easier to have his minions trigger the fire trap and burn him with it.
- Freezing halls is annoying as @#$% and it's also not worth going out of my way to find the thing if I find Kuduku first. 20 movespeed avian slippers are fun though.
- Trap builds tend to leave items behind because, well, trap build, throw it down and move on. This is very annoying too.
- I really, really hate galvanic ribbons. 
- And I probably shouldn't be testing in races when I'm still a fair few points from the reward marker I want. I have slightly messed up priorities when it comes to gaming, apparently.

Most importantly, I learnt that it's good to have a cleanup aoe besides the traps, at least in early game. This should also solve the problem of leaving stuff behind. However, shadows...don't exactly have a safe and fast cleanup aoe like ST. Closest I can think of is reave, maybe that'll work? Here's hoping I can get enough points in the regular races to use D:C as testing grounds, rather than having to push hard with an old build.

Going to make searing bond work, just watch me

The idea post

The basic idea is to run totems on CDT so I get a free source of casting totems. HP return will be done by life-on-hit, since I can't exactly leech on ancestral bond. Since the bond connects to me, I should be right up in the middle of everything, therefore cyclone.

Using a searing touch and soul mantle, with the requisite flasks of warding. 

Cyclone - life on hit - curse on hit - ele weakness
Searing bond - CDT - increased burning - empower - (does fire pen affect this?)
(soul mantle spelltotem) - q20 shock nova - conc.e - proliferation - CDT - enhance - ??? (probably running a level 19 CDT in order not to proc it at the identical time with searing bond, maybe)
Fire trap - proliferation - conc.e - increased burning (as long as we're doing burning damage, why not)
Lightning trap - proliferation - ??? (ditto the above)

Build link

Yeah, that's got like no dex on it. More's the pity. Anyway, notables: RT (no way I want to miss anything that returns life on hit), static blows (well, duh), ancestral bond (OP), US (running this on CDT, right? not sure this is essential though), etc. I'm not entirely happy about how the entire templar section links up, but luckily that's all non-essential, so meh I'll think about it later.

Turns out not a lot of supports affect searing bond, maybe I'll keep it 4-linked in that case, which would allow me to use a 1h and shield rather than searing touch. Which in turn would mean skip the staffblock cluster, reroute templar (I did say I wasn't happy with that) and get shieldblock.

RF - empower - aoe/conc.e, in a +2/+1 (does RF get negated by dual totems?) and using ruby flask(s) of warding.

Might need to pick up some armour clusters. Take the hybrid ES ones and go Aegis maybe. That all depends on how much I can afford to not be hit and still keep the totems up for a reasonable amount of time. Lose the fire and burning damage from ST though, not to mention the additional +2 to searing bond, and that's actually really significant.

Update: dumped the templar nodes, and in my previous experience with cyclone as HP I don't need US either. That way I can work on managing damage taken through ev as well as ar. build link the last nodes to be taken are Arsonist and the DoT/totem clusters below IR. Non-essentials, the whole bunch of them.

Descent: Champions

I got my first Mirror yesterday. Missed 9 points by a couple minutes, started a couple minutes late, have a really bad habit of pausing to do inventory rather than doing it on the go. The last few Descent: Champions races I've been following the same strategy, getting a feel for the zones. Like I prefer Croaking to Chattering Halls because chimerals are easier to deal with than avians...both suck, mind you, but one sort's easier. Similarly, I'd much rather face Hatestorm than Avatar. Anyway, this makes it about time to plot strategy. 

Current: Scion, 2h ST with fire trap support. Everything after Berserking depends on the best weapon found/crafted, so some days it won't go to the axe node. Depending on weapon ias relative to dps, and how much of it is physical, either Iron Grip or the ias nodes at start are taken.

I pulled the CSV of that race (big surprise) and checked it across classes (bigger surprise). Rank #20 of each class, overall rank and level. Pattern holds across multiple races.

Scion: #40, level 22
Duelist: #200, level 20
Marauder: #100, level 21
Ranger: #180, level 20
Shadow: #500, level 17
Templar: #350, level 18
Witch: #300, level 19

Looking at the skill tree, it's no wonder shadow does terribly, they have a crappy starting build and items. Relatively speaking. Not to mention that shadows always run into mana issues. Templar doesn't do too hot either after the early good nodes are taken, and witch has no survivability at all. Yeah.

I'm in a hurry and I have a few more days out of town, so concepting a different build will come another day. I have some ideas in mind already.

What would you do with 6 green links?

There's a mirrored chest floating around SC, it's got HP tri-res and something like 2k evasion...and 6 green sockets. And it's mirrored. Regretfully, at the time I had the opportunity to buy it, I turned it down. More's the pity. Still, it's been in my mind for a while that I should really try to make a build which works with 6 green links.

List of green active skills that can realistically run as main AoE without red/blue supports. In other words, no melee splash, but xMP is allowed. No comment on how well they run, mind you, only that they can.

Animate weapon? Huh. That's...a thought. (spell)
Burning arrow, explosive arrow, ice shot, lightning arrow, poison arrow, rain of arrows, split arrow
Elemental hit, frenzy
Cyclone
Detonate dead (spell)
Ethereal knives (spell)
Fire trap
Puncture?
Reave, whirling blades
Spectral throw

That's a pretty cool list, actually. Green supports? I mean - relevant green supports?

Added cold (q20 gives chance to freeze, which is pretty cool)
Additional accuracy
Blind
Cast on crit
Chain
Chance to flee
Cold pen
Enhance
Faster attacks
Faster/slower projectiles
xMP
Trap, multitrap
Pierce
Point blank

That means...we're likely looking at a cast on crit build, or maybe an EK-trap build. Pity about not being able to run added fire with the EK. Firetrap's out because it doesn't have enough potential green supports.

Split - fork - CoC - EK - DD - q20 add accuracy for more crit, or anything else. I don't like planning 6Ls. Maybe instead of split, use Reave and a dagger, or WB and the same if you're feeling adventurous. Why not ST, because ST means xMP, and xMP doesn't play too nice with EK. I'd prefer to go with the bow, because fork supports split and does not support reave/WB.

EK - trap - multitrap - standard EK green supports, so faster projectiles and fork...and one more whatever.

Ele hit - xMP - chain - I don't know, does this look like a wand build to you? Maybe use Frenzy with it, because ele hit is just asking for WED and we can't add a WED. (Actually, a lot of things would go well with WED. Too bad.) Accuracy, because @#$% wander accuracy, and as a bonus it gives crit. Oh, I think Enhance would actually go crazy well with Frenzy. Must try that sometime. Should be able to get away with no LL/ML because it's mostly physical, or at least you can flipping well make it mostly physical.

I'll concept these separately. Another day. Yeah, more's the pity I didn't pick up that 6L when I had the chance. If someone knows the unlucky bugger who currently has it, mind pointing them my way?

Nailed Fist OP

No, really. I'm posting this directly after a BLAMT race. It became easymode once I got the combination of ST and two Nailed Fists. As easymode as BLAMT ever gets, anyway.

Getting that first ST out really, really hurts though. The idea is to take it slow and pick up a ranged weapon ASAP. Zombies can be melee kited for 0 damage taken, just run away before its animation finishes playing. Sand spitters can't, more's the pity. Once you get a wand/bow, it's free xp and items. Otherwise, BM race though it is, ST is alright to use even on the beach, just don't go overboard.

It's pretty well impossible to beat Hillock as melee, I tried like 3 times and another 2 using ST. Wand and bow kiting both work - rangers and witches have a natural advantage in that they start that way, if you want to just rush Hillock. Hillock involves a bit more running in circles than I like, but it's better than dying.

After the race, I pulled the CSV and played with it a little, so we have stats!

#1 in class: scion/duelist/ranger level 12, witch 11, shadow/marauder/templar 9
#20: ranger 9, scion 7, witch 4 (this one was ranked #585 overall including dead characters)
9 duelists, 10 shadows, 16 marauders and 9 templars made it to level 3 and above (clearly that #1 duelist was an anomaly)
1132 characters made it to level 3 and above before dying; some of those didn't die.

I was going to post a witty comment here, but I think the numbers speak for themselves.

What's the point of Essentia Sanguis?

It's a 130-170 pdps claw (total ~200dps after lightning and quality) which gives Ghost Reaver. But wait, GR is right over near CI and the claw leech nodes. Makes this claw seem almost redundant, yeah?

Well, what if that zone wasn't strictly necessary? Templar's got good ES, and there's a circle above scion, and sure that's pretty close to CI (if 6 or 7 points minimum can be "close") but GR's another 4+ points over. Meh.

So...low life or hybrid build? PA's all the way over there, but unless using crown of eyes that hardly matters. A case could be made for either. 10% additional block chance while dual wielding claws, though the other claw would have to be downright spectacular and you'd be using doublestrike. And half the dw block is over by shadow/ranger. Hybrid incinerate with Cybil's Paw, maybe. Or something. Not sure how well that'd work.

For low life, it'd be all the templar ES nodes, possibly the scion ES wheel too, VP and US on the bottom - we're not going to the GR side, anyway. For hybrid, we can simply ignore that section, and...ohsnap, what if we did neither? Essentia's got a pretty respectable 6.68% crit, for a claw, and...aw man, half the crit is over in shadow, including all the claw crit. Oh well. Next time. Cast on crit's probably out then. Cast on damage taken, however, is not particularly dependent on the weapon. That'd require an Aegis. (I've got one, luckily.)

Tricky tricky. Claw, why?

This makes me want to make a hybrid build. Not necessarily with Essentia, but using a combination of ES and HP. I'll list that in another post another day, I think. 

When NOT to play HC

When your mental function is impaired. Now this is a tricky one, it doesn't correlate well with how you feel at the moment. You may feel perfectly fine, but that doesn't mean your decision making is on the ball.

Yeah, I ripped another character doing something stupid again.

Not enough people on the internet appreciate math

Even on Path, and this is one of the most math-heavy games in the mainstream style.

Concepts in this post should all be covered in a basic topology class. Some you might even find in set theory, wouldn't know, never took that.

The question was raised, what is the definition of a "build"? The relevant part of my answer is below.

--
Observations:
- Path build n-space is discrete. It's also closed and contains a (very large, but) finite number of elements.
- Passive tree major or minor changes have some effect sometimes. Big nodes are game-changing, small nodes have cumulative effects, but the only logical way to resolve this is for no nodes to be valueless.
- Skills are different. Support combinations are different, to some extent. As above, there can be only one logical resolution to this. Both these spaces don't necessarily behave all that well if you pick the wrong definitions, so don't pick the wrong definitions.
- For the most part, rare item stats have less impact, and similarly with statball uniques like Kaom's Primacy. On the other hand, there are build definers like Facebreaker. Such items, then, each correspond to a single dimension in Path build n-space, or we can say that Path build n-space is the product space of several spaces, some of which are Boolean in nature and correspond to items. But even statballs have their impacts: physical, spell, both? How much total MF? And so observe: it makes sense to have each individual stat mapping to some interval in R, and the sum total of rares/statballs occupying some point in R^m.

That's...clearly not all different builds the way the term "build" is generally used, though a strict definition should define them that way, so let me introduce the term "setup". Each element of Path build n-space is a different setup.

Luckily for us, setups tend to cluster in different regions of each of the parent spaces that contribute to the product space. Just as an example, on the skills space, taking a subset of all setups which contain the active skill element LA, a lot of xMP, chain, WED, etc are found, while setups containing MPD and splash are conspicuously absent. (If you're wondering, I defined a compact R^6 where "support gem does not work with skill" means that element just maps back to 0 on that dimension. There's a lot of (LA,0,0,0,0,0) in it. Not necessarily the most efficient method, but I'll take that trade-off for the well-behaved-ness of R^6 any day!)

>> I believe it is possible to define a metric on Path build n-space. Just saying. This is important.

But going back to the idea of clusters, that's basically a finer - or coarser, sorry I'm on a timer here not going to figure that one out - version of each of the mentioned spaces. Each element in Path build cluster n-space is a different build. Alternatively, for each cluster choose a point near its centre* to be the element in the corresponding space, and thus define builds.

*this is why the metric was important

Problem solved, right? The only fuzzy bit is the clusters one, and I'm not happy with that either, but how else are you going to draw an arbitrary line? The second method might be better, as in "I'm playing a setup that's close to theWombo's build on Path build n-space".

It really does have crap damage.

I was slightly preoccupied yesterday getting an endgame gear set on Nemesis, among other things, but found some time to squeeze in a little bit of testing with my pretty Darkscorn. I chose to use Eye of Chayula for anti-stun instead of taking US, and used Alpha's Howl for anti-chill along with anti-freeze (credit to Perz for pointing that one out to me!) Testing was done in docks, with the rationale that if I can't neatly clear it with a gear set thrown together in 5 minutes, then I can't clear higher maps with gear I spent 6 hours optimising.

Started by respeccing a 70 witch into the dex (evasion) variant of the tree. LA GMP chain WED LL - couldn't sustain mana. Well okay, only 25% of the damage gets 2% leech from Mind Drinker (I later specced out of that, so it's not in the tree linked above, but did take it at some point in time), and I'm not trying for crazy high damage so it's not enough, I get it. Substituted a mana leech for chain - turns out chain's important in getting LA to hit the max number of mobs. Huh. Regardless, even with evasion, I'm taking too much damage and not dealing enough. This sucks.

Well. The easiest option was to go via the str half of the tree and take IG. So that's what I did with my 80 witch. (Recoloured Darkscorn to 5G1R somewhere along the line so I could run both chain and mana leech, couldn't be bothered to recolour further, didn't have a WED gem slotted in but 1.4*terrible is still terrible. I figure as long as I'm doing the testing with the same gem setups on both, I can get a decent comparison in.)

First thing I noticed. Knockback is rolled per attack, like crit, and not per hit. That makes the little 15% knockback wheel next to useless. Next thing: went IR, and it boosted my survivability a ton. I kinda sorta knew that, but still. I'm still not doing enough damage to return as much HP as I'd like, though it's definitely better with IG.

To do:
- try out Blind
- try IR with the dex tree, and ditto the above.
- try socketing Knockback gem along with the skilltree wheel
- try a physical skill (split arrow + chain/fork?) which should allow for better mana return from leech; not sure how I'd pull off static-blows except by gear lightning damage though, and that's always iffy to depend on. Since I don't actually appear to have a leveled split-arrow right now, though, that might be a while in coming.

Where do I go from here, if it doesn't work? Well, I figure a Chin Sol will be a pretty decent damage boost, maybe enough to kick the 80 into viability for maps on this build. Probably better tanking too, with a guaranteed knockback meaning less damage taken. Would like to make it work. On the 70, I still have enough of my free respecs that I can rework the tree into Perz's crit claws tree, or I can do pretty well anything else that involves CI and the dex side of the tree. I don't know yet.

Or I can leave the characters hanging around until I get another idea, while I play Nemesis. Yeah, that sounds better to me. As a bonus, here's what one of my friends asked when I explained my build to him, and my response to it.
Q: This looks like it would be better done from Scion, why didn't you start there?
A: I didn't have a sufficiently high leveled scion with a full respec to play with.
My priorities are most definitely slightly skewed.