Today I want to start a series of short videos where I show how you can effectively 'glitch' a (greater) rift guardian to pose no threat to you. This is primarily for ranged classes, as melee has to generally tank the damage, though it's counterbalanced by never having to experience certain anti-range mechanics. None of this is bugged, but simply smart use of your environment to make the game AI work for you.
Thread will be updated with other rift guardian 'methods' as they become available, and once I have enough encounters to make some (generally) correct assumptions.
this strat is not just for RG's, you can do this with elites easily, specially in keeps levels, been doing this for weeks
The strat doesn't always work - it depends on the rg, and this is specific to Rakanoth. It's not just line of sight, but from my testing (thus far) there's a certain optimal range for pulling it off. Certain other guardians (bone warlock and crusader king), again from my testing to date, will teleport anyway, but in the case of SK you can avoid his teleport pretty easy. Supposedly you can juke Rakanoth's as well with split second timing, but I've never seen a video of anyone doing it.
Rakanoth CAN be "juked" as you say with smokescreen and some really good reflexes. It's better to simply not be there, but hey, if you live, you live, right?
The real issue with the Rift Guardians and the bosses/Ubers in general right now is that as of patch 2.1 (possibly even just 2.1.1), the animation they used to telegraph their moves has been drastically reduced to the point where with Rakanoth and his Uber/RG counterparts, there literally is no time to react to his telegraphinc of the teleport. Of course if he teleports at all, you're dead even if you're vaulting because he teleports to YOU, not to a spot on the map it seems.
He's actually the most difficult Uber for me to deal with because of that. And on the Uber encounter, you can't get him "stuck" on the terrain (pillar) like you can in rifts, so no matter what, you die. A lot. I had sixteen deaths on my T6 Gluttony event the last time I did it. It is said that it is best to stay behind Rakanoth at all times, but even when he's doing his frontal AoE he's turning with you and being in melee range with such short animation times means that if for any reason you run out of Discipline (as a DH) or your primary resource (other classes), you're pretty much screwed. And as a DH you have to vault so often to avoid his frontal AoE while keeping him in melee range that you're going to run out of resource before he goes down unless you pigeonhole yourself into a Nightstalker build.
Bloodmaw is very problematic in this regard as well. His animation sequence that telegraphis his jump is now less than 10 frames long and his jump is very fast now, giving you literally zero time to move out of the way. I've yet to find a comfortable position to keep him from doing this, so the "positioning is key" argument means I've yet to find that position where he won't jump at me like that, if there even is such a position.
But the real issues that make this a problem are the unavoidable damage factor and the absurd damage scaling in the game and total loss of control of your character in many situations. For Bloodmaw, the almost nonexistent telegraphing animation sequence puts his jump into the unavoidable damage category while his stun is so long that you lose control of your character for several seconds, easily long enough for him to one shot you.
It seems to me that the developers put unavoidable damage and OHK mechanics in to every possible place in Diablo 3 because they simply have zero clue how to create skill based encounters, despite the community, including myself, having givem then plenty of examples on how to do so since before the game launched.
It really is frustrating having my characters die instantly to unavoidable damage like Jailer and Vortex. I truly hate, loathe, and despise having to sit offscreen while my pets/sentries kill everything. I can't participate in the actual battle because if I do, I'm dead no matter what. It isn't skill that keeps me alive at higher GRs, it's purely luck. RNG decides whether or not I'm going to get instagibbed upon even seeing an elite pack. I mean, I can get charged from offscreen and OHKO'd. I can get jailed/vortexed from offscreen and get OHKO'd. I have no reaction time to get out of the way for Rakanoth/Bloodmaw. And if I don't get OHKO'd, I'm suffering secondary effects such as knockback and its associated secondary effect slow from unavoidable damage sucn as Thunderstorm and Mortar, which trigger Knockback and Nightmarish.
The entire design is anti-skill and the developers know this. Unfortunately for us the players, they are too set in their ways to change this to make the game more skill oriented and less RNG oriented. Players have grown absolutely sick and tired of the "RNG is RNG" argument. RNG determines everything in the game, and despite the developers' assertions that it adds replayability, it's also taking away the playability of the game. I daresay that replayability is a lost cause when players give up out of pure frustration from RNG anyway.
It has been said and still stands true that Belial is the best boss encounter in the game. It has deadly mechanics, but gives the player room to avoid them with skill. Mess up and you die. Do it right and you live. There's no RNG. You know what you need to do and practice makes perfect. The rest of the bosses, especially particular Ubers and most Rift Guardians? It's all RNG. Your death is binary. Get lucky and live, or get unlucky (most of the time) and die.
Threads like this should never have to even exist. But they do because without cheesing the monsters like this, we're toast. The OP even admits it himself in the video and every player knows it already from firsthand experience. Sure these bosses need to have deadly attacks. That's what makes them bosses. But they need to be realistically avoidable, otherwise no amount of skill will save you - it will all come down to luck. And we're well past the point of enjoying the RNG.
^ There are going to be changes to some things in grifts, including additional 'defense oriented' legendary gems.
However, there are some things to take into consideration:
1) T6 Ubers are extremely EASY once you get geared. They have a finite end - T6. Once you acquire the gear (~100-150 hours of solo play from my experience), you can handle them without any problems.
2) The greater rift versions are the real baddies, and in this series I will (attempt to) show how to overcome their attacks as a ranged class.
3) Jailer happens to everyone, not just ranged. Blizzard already stated that this is a gear check for ranged classes, who can go full out dps and avoid ALL damage otherwise, giving them a tremendous advantage over melee. Seriously - go play a barb, monk, or sader and face fire chains or electrified in grifts in melee ranged. It's not happening. If jailer et al were avoidable mechanics, NO ONE would play a melee class .. few do currently anyway, because ranged has such better damage mitigation via avoidance.
4) Corollary to the above, some of these mechanics CAN be avoided. Jailer can be outranged fairly easily. Vortex is not a threat if you're around a corner/pillar/hole in the ground/whatever. Also irrelevant in seasons if you use Krelm's buff bracers (vortex counts as a knockback). The REALLY bad ones are thunderstorm and frozen, with frozen being worse at mid-40s tiers. Thunderstorm you can escape with split second timing after the first tick, sometimes even the first tick if you get the right frame, but frozen is almost inescapable for the first few ticks, and impossible to outrange without also having your sentries being out of range. Below 40 grifts that's ok, but once you get into 40s, frozen will 1 shot you.
5) I will show you how to avoid getting hit by bloodmaw in a future video. His single leap is easily avoidable with proper timing, same with the crashing rocks. When he starts his multi-leap, just get out of range and watch the minimap, he'll eventually stop and when you see his icon going in your direction, vault in the other direction.
6) Blizz is aware of the RNG factor of grifts, and they said they will be making adjustments (hopefully getting rid of conduit).
Rakanoth CAN be "juked" as you say with smokescreen and some really good reflexes. It's better to simply not be there, but hey, if you live, you live, right?
Hell I juke Rak with my sader, just by moving. His blink strike is really telegraphed, you've got like almost a full second to react.
^ There are going to be changes to some things in grifts, including additional 'defense oriented' legendary gems.
However, there are some things to take into consideration:
1) T6 Ubers are extremely EASY once you get geared. They have a finite end - T6. Once you acquire the gear (~100-150 hours of solo play from my experience), you can handle them without any problems.
2) The greater rift versions are the real baddies, and in this series I will (attempt to) show how to overcome their attacks as a ranged class.
3) Jailer happens to everyone, not just ranged. Blizzard already stated that this is a gear check for ranged classes, who can go full out dps and avoid ALL damage otherwise, giving them a tremendous advantage over melee. Seriously - go play a barb, monk, or sader and face fire chains or electrified in grifts in melee ranged. It's not happening. If jailer et al were avoidable mechanics, NO ONE would play a melee class .. few do currently anyway, because ranged has such better damage mitigation via avoidance.
4) Corollary to the above, some of these mechanics CAN be avoided. Jailer can be outranged fairly easily. Vortex is not a threat if you're around a corner/pillar/hole in the ground/whatever. Also irrelevant in seasons if you use Krelm's buff bracers (vortex counts as a knockback). The REALLY bad ones are thunderstorm and frozen, with frozen being worse at mid-40s tiers. Thunderstorm you can escape with split second timing after the first tick, sometimes even the first tick if you get the right frame, but frozen is almost inescapable for the first few ticks, and impossible to outrange without also having your sentries being out of range. Below 40 grifts that's ok, but once you get into 40s, frozen will 1 shot you.
5) I will show you how to avoid getting hit by bloodmaw in a future video. His single leap is easily avoidable with proper timing, same with the crashing rocks. When he starts his multi-leap, just get out of range and watch the minimap, he'll eventually stop and when you see his icon going in your direction, vault in the other direction.
6) Blizz is aware of the RNG factor of grifts, and they said they will be making adjustments (hopefully getting rid of conduit).
None of the CC affixes did damage prior to the closed beta for RoS. That got added in and players doing higher difficulties, especially those at the lower end of the level spectrum (even with twink gear) were being one shot by the affixes. Vortex won't move you if you are around a pillar or whatnot, but it will damage you just like Jailer does. The damage portion is applied even if you aren't moved. Not a single one of the CC affixes is skill based in the least with the damage added on. None. Defensive oriented legendaries means less offensive power meaning less progression capability overall. That is not a solution.
What needs to happen is removal of the unavoidable damage on the CC affixes and altering of the affixes to enable real skill based play. I gave suggestions along those lines several times, as have others, so the devs do in fact have some references on how to proceed with that. They simply choose not to and we end up having to do things like making the videos you are about to make which describe how to cheese the bosses/monsters because the mechanics are just asinine.
Rakanoth CAN be "juked" as you say with smokescreen and some really good reflexes. It's better to simply not be there, but hey, if you live, you live, right?
Hell I juke Rak with my sader, just by moving. His blink strike is really telegraphed, you've got like almost a full second to react.
Both Rakanoth's Teleport and Bloodmaw's Leap have had their telegraphing animations drastically shortened. It isn't "almost a full second" to react anymore. It's more like about ten frames and that's it. I wouldn't have sixteen deaths to him in a single Uber session otherwise. And because he teleports to you and not a spot on the ground where you were, I'll often be in the middle of a Vault on my DH and still die. The only way I can stop him, and not even reliably, is to go Danetta's set and attempt to permastun him while my sentries whittle him down, which can take some time on T6.
My guess with regard to the shortening of the telegraphing is that this was the how the devs "improved the monster AI" - a LOT of enemies no longer telegraph their moves and simply do them the instant you aggro, especially the ones that charge from offscreen as well as the very annoying Punisher type monsters.
It feels like literally everything in the game is designed around being unavoidable and it saps the fun out of the most solidly built combat engine out there.
Vortex damage is nothing. If your really want to make frozen/jailer/thunderstorm avoidable, you have to make it avoidable for melee too. THEN, you need to make ALL melee elite affixes avoidable as well, without forcing melee to stop dps'ing. So, make fire chains and electrified avoidable, to make it fair. You're asking for 100% buff to ranged (which is already superior in grifts to melee in EVERY case), and absolutely NO buffs to melee. How is that fair?
In general though, for every game and every game mechanic, human AI > computer AI, so there will ALWAYS be some way to 'cheese' game mechanics as you say. It's unavoidable.
Today I want to give a couple quick tips on locking down the Bone Warlock. Although one of the easier rift guardians you'll face, he is more prone to teleporting (in my experience), so a good way to prevent him from every hitting you is to try (if possible) to set up your damage through a choke point, where you can vault, teleport, spirit walk, etc. to the other 'room' if he decides to port. Enjoy!
Today I want to give a couple quick tips on how to engage Blighter as a ranged class and how you can prevent him from casting his 'poison multishot'. This isn't specific to this guardian and works with any ranged missile attack (like Agnidox's fireball).
Basically you want to be within field of vision but up or down a ledge. Missile projectiles with either get 'eaten up' by the ledge or they won't cast them at all, and in the case of DH will instead focus on your pets. Enjoy!
Vortex damage is nothing. If your really want to make frozen/jailer/thunderstorm avoidable, you have to make it avoidable for melee too. THEN, you need to make ALL melee elite affixes avoidable as well, without forcing melee to stop dps'ing. So, make fire chains and electrified avoidable, to make it fair. You're asking for 100% buff to ranged (which is already superior in grifts to melee in EVERY case), and absolutely NO buffs to melee. How is that fair?
In general though, for every game and every game mechanic, human AI > computer AI, so there will ALWAYS be some way to 'cheese' game mechanics as you say. It's unavoidable.
I don't understand the statement that it has to be done so melees don't have to stop DPSing? Generally when I'm on a ranged and something gets tossed at me, I have to stop DPSing and get out of the way, why wouldn't melees?
Vortex damage is nothing. If your really want to make frozen/jailer/thunderstorm avoidable, you have to make it avoidable for melee too. THEN, you need to make ALL melee elite affixes avoidable as well, without forcing melee to stop dps'ing. So, make fire chains and electrified avoidable, to make it fair. You're asking for 100% buff to ranged (which is already superior in grifts to melee in EVERY case), and absolutely NO buffs to melee. How is that fair?
In general though, for every game and every game mechanic, human AI > computer AI, so there will ALWAYS be some way to 'cheese' game mechanics as you say. It's unavoidable.
I don't understand the statement that it has to be done so melees don't have to stop DPSing? Generally when I'm on a ranged and something gets tossed at me, I have to stop DPSing and get out of the way, why wouldn't melees?
Let me rephrase:
Ranged already has an advantage over melee in higher grift tiers, because they can avoid more damage - which, with how scaling works, is more beneficial than stacking toughness and 'beefing' your way through it.
You have to stop dpsing as a ranged class when something is tossed at you? Since when?
Sentry DH does nothing but run around, avoid all damage, and cast a sentry every few seconds. You're don't ever stop dpsing.
Wiz does nothing but run around and cast hydra/black hole/blizzard.
If you made jailer/thunderstorm/frozen AVOIDABLE for ranged classes, there would be ZERO need to stack toughness at all. Even now, on my DH I JUST have enough toughness to barely take 1 jailer hit before proccing awareness. The rest is straight damage. You can't say that for melee.
But ranged doesnt stop DPS'ing when avoiding damage. Sentries/Pets are just a few examples I can think of. Things dont die from a primary attack you do rather from the skills you use that keep attacking as you move to avoid damage. Melee has to stop pretty much all dps to avoid damage. A monk comes to mind on this. Most all his damage comes form close quarter skills. To avoid Electric I have to stop all dps and start over once the electric storm has ended.
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Thread will be updated with other rift guardian 'methods' as they become available, and once I have enough encounters to make some (generally) correct assumptions.
Blighter:
http://youtu.be/TBGPfz1c6PY
Bone Warlock:
http://youtu.be/m9B0ZwkSor4
Perdition / Rakanoth:
http://youtu.be/OZ6seICQzDw
MeatHeadGaming - YouTube - Twitch - Facebook - Web
MeatHeadGaming - YouTube - Twitch - Facebook - Web
WD Season 8 https://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/Kildare/84509816
Monk season 7 http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/MojoJoJo/42225505
DH season 6 http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/DeadShot/75655606
Angry Chicken http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/WhoDoVooDoo/68187610
What? Me worry?
He's actually the most difficult Uber for me to deal with because of that. And on the Uber encounter, you can't get him "stuck" on the terrain (pillar) like you can in rifts, so no matter what, you die. A lot. I had sixteen deaths on my T6 Gluttony event the last time I did it. It is said that it is best to stay behind Rakanoth at all times, but even when he's doing his frontal AoE he's turning with you and being in melee range with such short animation times means that if for any reason you run out of Discipline (as a DH) or your primary resource (other classes), you're pretty much screwed. And as a DH you have to vault so often to avoid his frontal AoE while keeping him in melee range that you're going to run out of resource before he goes down unless you pigeonhole yourself into a Nightstalker build.
Bloodmaw is very problematic in this regard as well. His animation sequence that telegraphis his jump is now less than 10 frames long and his jump is very fast now, giving you literally zero time to move out of the way. I've yet to find a comfortable position to keep him from doing this, so the "positioning is key" argument means I've yet to find that position where he won't jump at me like that, if there even is such a position.
But the real issues that make this a problem are the unavoidable damage factor and the absurd damage scaling in the game and total loss of control of your character in many situations. For Bloodmaw, the almost nonexistent telegraphing animation sequence puts his jump into the unavoidable damage category while his stun is so long that you lose control of your character for several seconds, easily long enough for him to one shot you.
It seems to me that the developers put unavoidable damage and OHK mechanics in to every possible place in Diablo 3 because they simply have zero clue how to create skill based encounters, despite the community, including myself, having givem then plenty of examples on how to do so since before the game launched.
It really is frustrating having my characters die instantly to unavoidable damage like Jailer and Vortex. I truly hate, loathe, and despise having to sit offscreen while my pets/sentries kill everything. I can't participate in the actual battle because if I do, I'm dead no matter what. It isn't skill that keeps me alive at higher GRs, it's purely luck. RNG decides whether or not I'm going to get instagibbed upon even seeing an elite pack. I mean, I can get charged from offscreen and OHKO'd. I can get jailed/vortexed from offscreen and get OHKO'd. I have no reaction time to get out of the way for Rakanoth/Bloodmaw. And if I don't get OHKO'd, I'm suffering secondary effects such as knockback and its associated secondary effect slow from unavoidable damage sucn as Thunderstorm and Mortar, which trigger Knockback and Nightmarish.
The entire design is anti-skill and the developers know this. Unfortunately for us the players, they are too set in their ways to change this to make the game more skill oriented and less RNG oriented. Players have grown absolutely sick and tired of the "RNG is RNG" argument. RNG determines everything in the game, and despite the developers' assertions that it adds replayability, it's also taking away the playability of the game. I daresay that replayability is a lost cause when players give up out of pure frustration from RNG anyway.
It has been said and still stands true that Belial is the best boss encounter in the game. It has deadly mechanics, but gives the player room to avoid them with skill. Mess up and you die. Do it right and you live. There's no RNG. You know what you need to do and practice makes perfect. The rest of the bosses, especially particular Ubers and most Rift Guardians? It's all RNG. Your death is binary. Get lucky and live, or get unlucky (most of the time) and die.
Threads like this should never have to even exist. But they do because without cheesing the monsters like this, we're toast. The OP even admits it himself in the video and every player knows it already from firsthand experience. Sure these bosses need to have deadly attacks. That's what makes them bosses. But they need to be realistically avoidable, otherwise no amount of skill will save you - it will all come down to luck. And we're well past the point of enjoying the RNG.
However, there are some things to take into consideration:
1) T6 Ubers are extremely EASY once you get geared. They have a finite end - T6. Once you acquire the gear (~100-150 hours of solo play from my experience), you can handle them without any problems.
2) The greater rift versions are the real baddies, and in this series I will (attempt to) show how to overcome their attacks as a ranged class.
3) Jailer happens to everyone, not just ranged. Blizzard already stated that this is a gear check for ranged classes, who can go full out dps and avoid ALL damage otherwise, giving them a tremendous advantage over melee. Seriously - go play a barb, monk, or sader and face fire chains or electrified in grifts in melee ranged. It's not happening. If jailer et al were avoidable mechanics, NO ONE would play a melee class .. few do currently anyway, because ranged has such better damage mitigation via avoidance.
4) Corollary to the above, some of these mechanics CAN be avoided. Jailer can be outranged fairly easily. Vortex is not a threat if you're around a corner/pillar/hole in the ground/whatever. Also irrelevant in seasons if you use Krelm's buff bracers (vortex counts as a knockback). The REALLY bad ones are thunderstorm and frozen, with frozen being worse at mid-40s tiers. Thunderstorm you can escape with split second timing after the first tick, sometimes even the first tick if you get the right frame, but frozen is almost inescapable for the first few ticks, and impossible to outrange without also having your sentries being out of range. Below 40 grifts that's ok, but once you get into 40s, frozen will 1 shot you.
5) I will show you how to avoid getting hit by bloodmaw in a future video. His single leap is easily avoidable with proper timing, same with the crashing rocks. When he starts his multi-leap, just get out of range and watch the minimap, he'll eventually stop and when you see his icon going in your direction, vault in the other direction.
6) Blizz is aware of the RNG factor of grifts, and they said they will be making adjustments (hopefully getting rid of conduit).
MeatHeadGaming - YouTube - Twitch - Facebook - Web
What needs to happen is removal of the unavoidable damage on the CC affixes and altering of the affixes to enable real skill based play. I gave suggestions along those lines several times, as have others, so the devs do in fact have some references on how to proceed with that. They simply choose not to and we end up having to do things like making the videos you are about to make which describe how to cheese the bosses/monsters because the mechanics are just asinine.
Both Rakanoth's Teleport and Bloodmaw's Leap have had their telegraphing animations drastically shortened. It isn't "almost a full second" to react anymore. It's more like about ten frames and that's it. I wouldn't have sixteen deaths to him in a single Uber session otherwise. And because he teleports to you and not a spot on the ground where you were, I'll often be in the middle of a Vault on my DH and still die. The only way I can stop him, and not even reliably, is to go Danetta's set and attempt to permastun him while my sentries whittle him down, which can take some time on T6.
My guess with regard to the shortening of the telegraphing is that this was the how the devs "improved the monster AI" - a LOT of enemies no longer telegraph their moves and simply do them the instant you aggro, especially the ones that charge from offscreen as well as the very annoying Punisher type monsters.
It feels like literally everything in the game is designed around being unavoidable and it saps the fun out of the most solidly built combat engine out there.
In general though, for every game and every game mechanic, human AI > computer AI, so there will ALWAYS be some way to 'cheese' game mechanics as you say. It's unavoidable.
MeatHeadGaming - YouTube - Twitch - Facebook - Web
Today I want to give a couple quick tips on locking down the Bone Warlock. Although one of the easier rift guardians you'll face, he is more prone to teleporting (in my experience), so a good way to prevent him from every hitting you is to try (if possible) to set up your damage through a choke point, where you can vault, teleport, spirit walk, etc. to the other 'room' if he decides to port. Enjoy!
http://youtu.be/m9B0ZwkSor4
MeatHeadGaming - YouTube - Twitch - Facebook - Web
Today I want to give a couple quick tips on how to engage Blighter as a ranged class and how you can prevent him from casting his 'poison multishot'. This isn't specific to this guardian and works with any ranged missile attack (like Agnidox's fireball).
Basically you want to be within field of vision but up or down a ledge. Missile projectiles with either get 'eaten up' by the ledge or they won't cast them at all, and in the case of DH will instead focus on your pets. Enjoy!
http://youtu.be/TBGPfz1c6PY
MeatHeadGaming - YouTube - Twitch - Facebook - Web
WD Season 8 https://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/Kildare/84509816
Monk season 7 http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/MojoJoJo/42225505
DH season 6 http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/DeadShot/75655606
Angry Chicken http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/WhoDoVooDoo/68187610
What? Me worry?
Ranged already has an advantage over melee in higher grift tiers, because they can avoid more damage - which, with how scaling works, is more beneficial than stacking toughness and 'beefing' your way through it.
You have to stop dpsing as a ranged class when something is tossed at you? Since when?
Sentry DH does nothing but run around, avoid all damage, and cast a sentry every few seconds. You're don't ever stop dpsing.
Wiz does nothing but run around and cast hydra/black hole/blizzard.
If you made jailer/thunderstorm/frozen AVOIDABLE for ranged classes, there would be ZERO need to stack toughness at all. Even now, on my DH I JUST have enough toughness to barely take 1 jailer hit before proccing awareness. The rest is straight damage. You can't say that for melee.
MeatHeadGaming - YouTube - Twitch - Facebook - Web