I'm currently playing 4-man GRs with my friends and I have noticed that strategy becomes more important than gear. Teamwork and knowing when to do what is essential for this. Hopefully this thread will be a place where kind people with the know-how will share their knowledge with others
As far as I know the current meta according the leaderboards is that there is one DPS (ET wizzard) and 3 support classes (usually HOTA barb, monk and WD). The support team has many tasks:
Spawning of globes
Grouping mobs
Positioning elites & bosses whenever possible near a spot where twisters can "stick"
Providing damage buffs, increased toughness and damage reduction
Main strategy questions now are:
When do you stay and fight and when do you skip forward in hope of more density and elites?
How to position elites near corners?
What to do if you aren't able to group and position elites effectively (i.e. teleporter, shielding, etc.)
Here are a few conclusions from our pushing pretty low levels (finished GR89 only):
You get more progress faster from large groups of trash, since you fully utilize area damage, if you can get a pack or two (or 3? :P) to mix with this trash - great!
Even when you find great density, try to position yourselves behind them (pass a little further so you might attract even more mobs)
If you encounter a fishy elite/rare pack with low trash density it is not worth it to simply stay and waste a minute for a few progress globes. Even if they are at 25% it seems questionable to stay once the trash has been killed. Try to move them forward and find more density.
Boss are hit & miss for us atm... Shrines help a lot by spawning a pack (=area damage & more globes/AP) but possitioning a boss where the twisters stick is the ultimate dream and goal. We have not yet found a very consistent way of doing that.
That is it from me. Hopefully you guys will have some more knowledge and tips! If anyone has a video of some high GR speed runs and pushing please do share, I'd really be interested in this as I have not been able to find any.
This is some great advice! I've stopped playing the wizard meta as I simply don't like it, but in general these are some helpful pointers. I'll add some of my own:
Don't create too large groups, especially with elite packs around. On EU, a triple pack almost instantly guarantees that much lag that you'll lose time due to a frozen game (regardless of the time). Very telling was in Empyrian's recent GR100 video (shot at 7am in the morning after maintenance, so probably the best time to play) where they avoided having a triple pack due to lag: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9xsqPEh1n4
Do not take pylons too quickly, but think about maximizing their use for a second. For example, if you take a power pylon with Nemesis, kill one pack quickly, move on and find a double pack in the next room - right after the pylon ran out - you wasted a lot of potential. On Conduit, it might be better to stay in the middle of the room rather than in a corner, such as to hit as many mobs as possible. A speed pylon on a bad map just means: take it and run for your life to the next level; do not waste the opportunity and stay on a bad map, fighting the one elite pack. Same might be true for a shield pylon. As DarkokraD said, trash is better for progress especially in higher GRs; elites and champions are nice if they're accompanied by trash, but pretty much useless and should be skipped if they're alone.
The support classes should try to minimize CC effects, such that the barb can use his spear efficiently to pull single mobs back in. That means: the monk should only cast CS once per pack that you're fighting. Don't spam Mass Confusion, Blinding Flash, and other CC effects while walking through mobs. You'll trigger the mobs' CC immunity and make it impossible for them to be pulled in. Go as quickly as possible to the next point where you want to fight a pack/a group of trash, and let stuff walk in and use the pulls to get them closer together. Once the situation is stable, the barb can poke left and right to get more mobs in (though make sure to stay in range for Ignore Pain).
A lot of it is experience. We've personally realized over thousands of runs that we're deceived way too often by staying on an elite pack, when moving on would've been better. We established two rules: 1) If you even ask yourself "should we skip this?" then the answer is immediately: yes, you should skip this. Rifts have enough mobs and often 5-6 levels, so don't bother fighting sub-par stuff. 2) if anyone in Teamspeak says "skip", we skip. No further discussion. I'd say in 9 our of 10 cases we failed because we didn't skip enough, and only 1 in 10 because we skipped too much.
On bosses, it depends a lot on which boss it is. 1) Is it a boss that teleports/moves a lot - like almost all of them - or one that mostly stays in place? 2) Can everyone, including the wizard, stay close to the boss or will it be impossible to survive after a while (e.g., Ghom)? Depending on those and other questions, pick a good room. It's not really possible to keep Ember or Rime on a "sticky twister" spot, so rather find a room (optimally a square room like in Keep Depths or Ruins of Corvus, not a hallway) where the twisters bounce a lot and combine somewhere in the room.
Hey! thank you for sharing this information. i was looking for that the last days. i couldnt even find a good yt tutorial.
i still have one question (i was wondering about that in solo too) : is it worth it once a yellow is down, to stay and kill the minions or should i just go on?
Absolutely not. Minions have twice the HP of the same mob type as non-minion, so they're not worth it in terms of progress. The only reason to ever kill minion is if you use In-Geom (all minions need to die for In-Geom to proc), but that's obviously for speed farming and not when pushing.
I bump the topic to ask a question about monk cyclone.
The monk in my party tell us that when in 4men group, he can't often move mobs more than once or two, while when playing alone he can do that much more.
I read the comment abouve done by bagstone "the monk should only cast CS once per pack that you're fighting"...but then how to handle mobs that run away (like wasp, phantoms, goblins and many others)? just skip them? to kill them separatly is not good them in term of progression, even when farming at low level.
1) Those wasps and ghosts will constantly fly away, and after a few pulls back in they'll be immune. In general, ignore those kind of mob types, kill the majority of stuff around you, and move on. Bees are not worth it, in general.
2) The reason why your monk can't pull in after 1-2 pulls is because of too much CC going on in your group. Get rid of all "knockback/chill/slow/... on hit" effects on secondary item rolls. Tell every class to minimize the use of CC effects until you're standing in the corner (for example, monk and WD should not randomly spam Blinding Flash/Horrify/Hex/Mass Confusion/Piranhas while walking *through* mobs).
3) If a few stray mobs run away, that's usually the barbarian's job to get them back in (using the Harpoon). If many mobs run away you just move on. You can pull them back in using CS maybe a few times, but at some point they *will* be immune and the fight just becomes a mess and you'll lose time. As I outlined in #2, the main reason for failing a rift is often to pick "wrong fights".
Hi guys,
I'm currently playing 4-man GRs with my friends and I have noticed that strategy becomes more important than gear. Teamwork and knowing when to do what is essential for this. Hopefully this thread will be a place where kind people with the know-how will share their knowledge with others
As far as I know the current meta according the leaderboards is that there is one DPS (ET wizzard) and 3 support classes (usually HOTA barb, monk and WD). The support team has many tasks:
Main strategy questions now are:
Here are a few conclusions from our pushing pretty low levels (finished GR89 only):
I have found this video of a GR100 clear, think it is worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqVjZpFQrcs
That is it from me. Hopefully you guys will have some more knowledge and tips! If anyone has a video of some high GR speed runs and pushing please do share, I'd really be interested in this as I have not been able to find any.
This is some great advice! I've stopped playing the wizard meta as I simply don't like it, but in general these are some helpful pointers. I'll add some of my own:
2) The reason why your monk can't pull in after 1-2 pulls is because of too much CC going on in your group. Get rid of all "knockback/chill/slow/... on hit" effects on secondary item rolls. Tell every class to minimize the use of CC effects until you're standing in the corner (for example, monk and WD should not randomly spam Blinding Flash/Horrify/Hex/Mass Confusion/Piranhas while walking *through* mobs).
3) If a few stray mobs run away, that's usually the barbarian's job to get them back in (using the Harpoon). If many mobs run away you just move on. You can pull them back in using CS maybe a few times, but at some point they *will* be immune and the fight just becomes a mess and you'll lose time. As I outlined in #2, the main reason for failing a rift is often to pick "wrong fights".