So it is finally over: 4 months and 13 days of preparation with 3 weeks of pushing all led to this moment, my (failed) masterpiece of Season 3. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making the video (both the runs and the editing). I spent quite some time to find fitting music choices, and then went with these four songs by Audiomachine (see on YT link). I feel that they very accurately fit into the scenery and the course of the rift, especially the last one. I also included a nice little compilation of a couple of my runs in the beginning to pay my homage to the Unburied (accompanied by OraK's 'Unburied Family' Song), sadly the only monster type that DHs can fish for a rank 1 attempt (but they make up for it with their cuteness!). In case you're curious, I accumulated about 630 hours of play time in S3, and spent roughly 70-90 of those in trials, and 60-90 in solo attempts.
Short backstory:
After another evening of pushing for a couple of hours, I managed to find this incredible rift: Unburied / Silver Spire, with only three elite packs. Even though it might not seem like that sometimes, clearing the rift indeed required very intense concentration in many situations. The two pylons I got (Power + Conduit) both proved almost entirely useless. I engaged a yellow Unburied pack I needed to skip early on (which is something that is very difficult to do, even more so on an open-space map like Silver Spire, you can see it followed me very far in the beginning). The two blue packs I killed both had a dangerous oneshot affix (Vortex / Jailer), and in one case I had no Awareness up, which means that I could not afford to fail my timing on a single RoV / Smoke Screen cast. I feel that I could have barely done it any better.
Even though for DHs it's usually entirely about the rift and very little about the RG, it seems that this time it was almost the other way around. I spawned it with an incredible 4.5min left, my best time since basically ever (including S1 and S2). It was a horribly long fight (engage at 11:49, kill at 16:42 = 4min 53sec, 7.33b dps), Perendi moves a lot and spawns dozens of adds, I lost the Single Out and the slow proc from my enchantress' Thunderfury very often, which really made the fight drag on and on. I haven't fought all RGs on 66 so it's difficult to tell exactly, but generally my kill times are within 3.5 to 4.5 min (Stonesinger would be around 2-2.5min), I even defeated Man Carver once in close to 5min. Perendi is very easy but I knew that he is on the longer side of fights, I fought him once with the cold build, which took about 8.5 minutes on 65, and like that it stayed uncertain until the very last moments whether I would make it or not. With my mind completely focused on the RG I had mixed feelings of desperation and determination, something that I tried to emphasize with my music choice for the fight. My heart was pumping and I was trying everything to squeeze any last point of damage; most importantly by delaying my Smoke Screens as much as possible and even taking an Awareness proc on purpose to have more discipline for Caltrops, but unfortunately it just wasn't enough. The timer ran out at 98/2148b hp left (~4.5%), and even finishing off this little took an eternity as I was losing my focus and everything started to turn into chaos.
All in all, I had a blast in Season 3, and even though I didn't quite make it it in the end, I feel proud of my accomplishments and want to share my run. I have opened about 800 rifts on the tiers 65-67, about 250 of those with the cold build and the remaining 550 with fire. I got about 15-20 Unburied rifts, I lost count at some point. When I started pushing, I expected to require about 200 keys for tier 65, and 500 for 66, and never intended to try 67 with my low paragon. I did it anyway with a couple of failed trial keys, and even got a ~3 min time advantage + power pylon for boss once in a Teddy / Cave of the Betrayer rift (with cold). Other than that, I had four tier 66 rifts which would have been a 65 clear, and I failed tier 66 by less than 2 min three times (= 300 more paragons would seal the deal). Out of all those runs, I never found a single rift that I could have beaten with my combination of items / gems / paragons, meaning I never failed one of them to anything besides RNG (which should be your ultimate goal if you want to improve in the game). The 15min 25sec clear definitely was my closest attempt, but even after rewatching it several times I am convinced I could not have done it 26sec quicker. In any case, I had lots of fun in my three weeks of pushing (that started off with my tier 64 clear with merely 2 hours invested, after I had been on a break for more than 4 weeks), and I hope my viewers who supported me and chanted the Stonesinger song for me so diligently had the same.
I'm looking forward to pushing again in Season 4, obviously on my DH
@Dunkelvieh: The biggest issues with ES are that it has a travel time and needs to be precisely aimed at the target, and even then it's only 2 targets for 2 seconds (if you're using the hatred rune). Even with how clunky the reliance on the Enchantress turns out to be sometimes, it's just the overall better choice.
@jamesworkshop: Sick screen I gotta try my legacy Buriza with a cubed Leonine's
DH Tier 66 Solo (15:25)
So it is finally over: 4 months and 13 days of preparation with 3 weeks of pushing all led to this moment, my (failed) masterpiece of Season 3. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making the video (both the runs and the editing). I spent quite some time to find fitting music choices, and then went with these four songs by Audiomachine (see on YT link). I feel that they very accurately fit into the scenery and the course of the rift, especially the last one. I also included a nice little compilation of a couple of my runs in the beginning to pay my homage to the Unburied (accompanied by OraK's 'Unburied Family' Song), sadly the only monster type that DHs can fish for a rank 1 attempt (but they make up for it with their cuteness!). In case you're curious, I accumulated about 630 hours of play time in S3, and spent roughly 70-90 of those in trials, and 60-90 in solo attempts.
Short backstory:
After another evening of pushing for a couple of hours, I managed to find this incredible rift: Unburied / Silver Spire, with only three elite packs. Even though it might not seem like that sometimes, clearing the rift indeed required very intense concentration in many situations. The two pylons I got (Power + Conduit) both proved almost entirely useless. I engaged a yellow Unburied pack I needed to skip early on (which is something that is very difficult to do, even more so on an open-space map like Silver Spire, you can see it followed me very far in the beginning). The two blue packs I killed both had a dangerous oneshot affix (Vortex / Jailer), and in one case I had no Awareness up, which means that I could not afford to fail my timing on a single RoV / Smoke Screen cast. I feel that I could have barely done it any better.
Even though for DHs it's usually entirely about the rift and very little about the RG, it seems that this time it was almost the other way around. I spawned it with an incredible 4.5min left, my best time since basically ever (including S1 and S2). It was a horribly long fight (engage at 11:49, kill at 16:42 = 4min 53sec, 7.33b dps), Perendi moves a lot and spawns dozens of adds, I lost the Single Out and the slow proc from my enchantress' Thunderfury very often, which really made the fight drag on and on. I haven't fought all RGs on 66 so it's difficult to tell exactly, but generally my kill times are within 3.5 to 4.5 min (Stonesinger would be around 2-2.5min), I even defeated Man Carver once in close to 5min. Perendi is very easy but I knew that he is on the longer side of fights, I fought him once with the cold build, which took about 8.5 minutes on 65, and like that it stayed uncertain until the very last moments whether I would make it or not. With my mind completely focused on the RG I had mixed feelings of desperation and determination, something that I tried to emphasize with my music choice for the fight. My heart was pumping and I was trying everything to squeeze any last point of damage; most importantly by delaying my Smoke Screens as much as possible and even taking an Awareness proc on purpose to have more discipline for Caltrops, but unfortunately it just wasn't enough. The timer ran out at 98/2148b hp left (~4.5%), and even finishing off this little took an eternity as I was losing my focus and everything started to turn into chaos.
All in all, I had a blast in Season 3, and even though I didn't quite make it it in the end, I feel proud of my accomplishments and want to share my run. I have opened about 800 rifts on the tiers 65-67, about 250 of those with the cold build and the remaining 550 with fire. I got about 15-20 Unburied rifts, I lost count at some point. When I started pushing, I expected to require about 200 keys for tier 65, and 500 for 66, and never intended to try 67 with my low paragon. I did it anyway with a couple of failed trial keys, and even got a ~3 min time advantage + power pylon for boss once in a Teddy / Cave of the Betrayer rift (with cold). Other than that, I had four tier 66 rifts which would have been a 65 clear, and I failed tier 66 by less than 2 min three times (= 300 more paragons would seal the deal). Out of all those runs, I never found a single rift that I could have beaten with my combination of items / gems / paragons, meaning I never failed one of them to anything besides RNG (which should be your ultimate goal if you want to improve in the game). The 15min 25sec clear definitely was my closest attempt, but even after rewatching it several times I am convinced I could not have done it 26sec quicker. In any case, I had lots of fun in my three weeks of pushing (that started off with my tier 64 clear with merely 2 hours invested, after I had been on a break for more than 4 weeks), and I hope my viewers who supported me and chanted the Stonesinger song for me so diligently had the same.
I'm looking forward to pushing again in Season 4, obviously on my DH
If you are interested in further information about solo DH in patch 2.3, here are my recent post about Natalya RoV and a first glimpse at how fire UE will look like in patch 2.3 (to be continued). Also, if you want to see those, my tier 66 run with cold and my successful tier 64 run (Rank 4 EU).
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Damn, quoting seems bugged today.
@Dunkelvieh: The biggest issues with ES are that it has a travel time and needs to be precisely aimed at the target, and even then it's only 2 targets for 2 seconds (if you're using the hatred rune). Even with how clunky the reliance on the Enchantress turns out to be sometimes, it's just the overall better choice.
@jamesworkshop: Sick screen
I gotta try my legacy Buriza with a cubed Leonine's
Profile | Twitch | Youtube | Twitter | Recruitment: Zero Empathy are looking for the best players in Europe