Hello, this is Chewingnom from <WQW> Quantum Warriors on EU server. I just wanted to share with you all our World #1 clear videos along with the post from my mate S0RRY :
Era 6 is ending soon, so we decided to set our videos of World #1 in 2, 3 and 4 players available to the public. As a team (LouLou, Chewingnom, Hustle and S0RRY), we have put many hours into theorycrafting, defining the metagame, developing the best setups and the best playstyle for this patch.
Adding to that, we put a lot of time into pushing the highest greater rifts tiers possible with the biggest achievement of clearing the first and only GR130 in this 2.4.1 patch. We hope our videos can show our dedication to the game and maybe motivate some of you to push harder in your own greater rift attempts.
PS : I thank LouLou for being so patient in his role as Twister machine, Hustle for being the best at stacking toads and Chewingnom for never missing any mobs on a map and making + uploading the videos. <WQW> S0RRY
As you can see the map is quite insane, which is pretty much needed at that level. We actually failed a lot of GR by less than a minute, sometimes without conduit, sometimes without power... We could have done a way better timer on open map like Arreat Cave even with a slightly worse mobtype. We also encountered alot of lag spikes on this clear sadly. But it doesn't matter in the end, a clear is a clear !
I'm writing this post because I wanted to share our GR120 4P clear on EU NS (EU #1) (Just done tonight!) with you. You will think that we are just some high paragon guys fishing for a good rift... But I share this clear with you because this is not exactly the case. We actually replaced the Support Monk by a whole new build that I'm thinking about since 2.4.1 PTR (And even back in 2.4) : The Heal Crusader.
You will say "Nothing new, a lot of people have theorycrafted Support Crusader builds since 2.4". Indeed, since 2.4, there is alot of Support Crusader builds here and there, but none of these builds had the potential to be part of the metagame, mostly because the monks spot is the only viable spot to be replaced by the. Thus, I came up with a Crusader build able to replace the Monk and capable of GR120+.
After alot of brainstorming I finally found a build that was actually worth to try a few weeks ago. So we made a few tries and cleared GR115 pretty easily (You can see it here). After some more tests in GR119/120 and some builds adjustements with my mates LouLou, Hustle and S0RRY, we felt it was clearly viable and we decided to just do it. Our sweet mate S0RRY who was playing Monk switched to Crusader and he actually learned the gameplay really fast !
Setup Used :
ET Wizard : LouLou
Support Barb : Chewingnom
Support WD : Hustle
Support Crusader : S0RRY
The Consecration + Inviolable Faith healing has alot of potential so you can compensate some of the toughness loss quite easily (Blur Passive + Ghost Trance BBV).
The Sweep Attack packing is insane for Pain Enhancer and Area Damage in high density maps, especially with a static DPS like Twister Wizard.
The Critical Law is a great DPS buff along with Resolved Judgment. Though, the problem with Judgment is that the Crit Buff doesnt work on CC-immune mobs, so the uptime is not that good sadly.
The potential :
We think it can compete with Support Monk in high end pushing (Likely 122+). I can see Support Crusader and Support Monk being equally viable in the 4 players metagame, Support Monk is in my opinion the safe way with no surprise while Support Crusader is the risky way with opportunities to really shine, more potential. Risky, indeed. Toughness is not a real issue in most cases but some bad elites combos can be hard to survive with a Crusader. Monk is still more consistent for toughness.
Why can it be worth it to play Crusader? Alongside the Critical Law, the main advantage for the Heal Crusader is Gathering Sweep. The more density you have, the more the Crusader will buff your DPS by sweeping mobs. More mobs into PE and ET range, more ET breakpoints, more AD, AD more efficient...
Still, it is very hard to quantify the DPS gain from the Sweep Attack, but playing Crusader is allways a ~5% DPS buff even without Sweep Attack and with Judgment poor uptime taken into account. But, the DPS potential due to Sweep Attack can theoretically be so insane in « dream maps » that it can justify to drop the Monk if you are at your DPS ceiling. In the end, my opinion is that you will have to decide what's best for your group and what you prefer to play.
Note that I'm only talking about the 4 players metagame here. The toughness buffs from Monk are likely mandatory in 2 players and 3 players (With the current Twister build at least, but the concept of Tal Rasha 6P is mostly locking the Wizard build anyway). But maybe we just didn't think enough about it!
I gave up the Roland 6P (250% Attack Speed Bonus) that I tried back in 2.4 to get the Roland 2P (Cooldowns Reset with Sweep Attack) along with the Akkhan 4P (50% RCR while in Akarat and 50% CDR on Akarat) instead.
One of the keys of the build is to use the Akkhan's Addendum in the Cube Weapon Slot which gives you Prophet Rune (150% Armor & Cheat Death Proc) and Embodiment of Power Rune (+5 Wrath Regen) of Akarat Champion and allows you to take Rally Rune.
The Rally Rune is basically resetting all your cooldowns when you use it. One of the other keys to the build is Akarat's Awakening that will reset your cooldowns everytime you block, as with both Justice Lantern and Hold Your Ground Passive, you can be block-capped. Thus, all of this will allow you to put down alot of Consecration very fast and will also allow you to handle your cooldowns and Zodiac ring procs easily, giving you enough freedom to focus on sweeping mobs.
The gameplay is quite obvious and simple : You have to stack Consecration on the floor to get healing, while Sweeping mobs wisely (No mindless spam) into the Twister range. Always use Consecration and Law just before using Rally Akarat (which will reset them) in order to enhance your Consecration Stacking and Zodiac Ring Procs.
You have to use Judgment wisely too, because it roots enemies, you have to figure out the best way to use it : Only on the mobs already stacked with Gathering Sweep into Twister Range, right before an Arcane CoE... Condemn is still very useful to pack density and sometimes keeping it together but Shield Glare may likely be a viable option to get 20% damage buff.
Conclusion :
It seems to me that the build is pretty strong in its current state and may likely be the best group setup while fishing for a dream map in high endgame. The coordination of the group and the teamplay is likely way more difficult to master than with a Monk though.
Remember that the metagame is never settled in stone and copy/paste builds from Rank 1 guys doesn't mean you are playing the best setup (Or the only viable setup). There are so many build-possibilities, so many group synergies that maybe nobody thought about yet, that you can't just say "If Rank 1 is playing this, it is the best build/setup, no matter what". No.
Thus I wanted to thank my mates LouLou, Hustle and S0RRY who are very smart/good players and always want to try out new builds and group setups. Thanks guys, keep up the good work
Paragon is surely more and more a problem. Capping is (in my opinion) not a good solution because the game is about farming, its a hack'n'slash. Guess one of the best solution could be to rework the xp curve so that it begins to be exponential at paragon 1000. Yeah, there will always be people higher than everyone else, but in the end, with exponential xp curve, they will be 100 or 200 paragon higher than average competitive players, not 500 or 600 because of linear xp curve.
Considering the actual state of the metagame, and all the lags issues, i would rather prefer lags fix to allow everybody to play new setups than a new patch because i'm under the impression we are far from a "best patch meta" in 4 players at least, mostly because of lag issues.
SWK monk seems to sit here in the meta just because we cant bring another real dps build without lagging and crashing the game. At least with SWK you can hope to blow the pack even with lags. I dont know about you, but it just reminds me the trials from the previous patch.
Having a metagame tied to the lag is not really sane imo, and a new patch will not be a good thing if the lags are the same and we are forced to play in a specifical setup to lag less, its not the spirit of the game for me. I want to try all the setups I want to and have fun.
In next patch what ? We will just replace the hype DPS build and replace it by the new hype DPS build. And if the new hype DPS build is lagging too much, we will stay with Dart WD or something else which is efficient but suboptimal, so what ?
2
Hello, this is Chewingnom from <WQW> Quantum Warriors on EU server. I just wanted to share with you all our World #1 clear videos along with the post from my mate S0RRY :
Thanks everyone !
3
Hello, this is Chewingnom from the clan <WQW> Quantum Warriors on EU.
Youtube Video of the clear is now available ! https://youtu.be/HNSFSg6sQe8
As you can see the map is quite insane, which is pretty much needed at that level. We actually failed a lot of GR by less than a minute, sometimes without conduit, sometimes without power... We could have done a way better timer on open map like Arreat Cave even with a slightly worse mobtype. We also encountered alot of lag spikes on this clear sadly. But it doesn't matter in the end, a clear is a clear !
I'm writing this post because I wanted to share our GR120 4P clear on EU NS (EU #1) (Just done tonight!) with you. You will think that we are just some high paragon guys fishing for a good rift... But I share this clear with you because this is not exactly the case. We actually replaced the Support Monk by a whole new build that I'm thinking about since 2.4.1 PTR (And even back in 2.4) : The Heal Crusader.
You will say "Nothing new, a lot of people have theorycrafted Support Crusader builds since 2.4". Indeed, since 2.4, there is alot of Support Crusader builds here and there, but none of these builds had the potential to be part of the metagame, mostly because the monks spot is the only viable spot to be replaced by the. Thus, I came up with a Crusader build able to replace the Monk and capable of GR120+.
After alot of brainstorming I finally found a build that was actually worth to try a few weeks ago. So we made a few tries and cleared GR115 pretty easily (You can see it here). After some more tests in GR119/120 and some builds adjustements with my mates LouLou, Hustle and S0RRY, we felt it was clearly viable and we decided to just do it. Our sweet mate S0RRY who was playing Monk switched to Crusader and he actually learned the gameplay really fast !
Setup Used :
ET Wizard : LouLou
Support Barb : Chewingnom
Support WD : Hustle
Support Crusader : S0RRY
Clear/Leaderboards screenshots :
Clear Screenshot
Leaderboards
Some hints :
The potential :
We think it can compete with Support Monk in high end pushing (Likely 122+). I can see Support Crusader and Support Monk being equally viable in the 4 players metagame, Support Monk is in my opinion the safe way with no surprise while Support Crusader is the risky way with opportunities to really shine, more potential. Risky, indeed. Toughness is not a real issue in most cases but some bad elites combos can be hard to survive with a Crusader. Monk is still more consistent for toughness.
Why can it be worth it to play Crusader? Alongside the Critical Law, the main advantage for the Heal Crusader is Gathering Sweep. The more density you have, the more the Crusader will buff your DPS by sweeping mobs. More mobs into PE and ET range, more ET breakpoints, more AD, AD more efficient...
Still, it is very hard to quantify the DPS gain from the Sweep Attack, but playing Crusader is allways a ~5% DPS buff even without Sweep Attack and with Judgment poor uptime taken into account. But, the DPS potential due to Sweep Attack can theoretically be so insane in « dream maps » that it can justify to drop the Monk if you are at your DPS ceiling. In the end, my opinion is that you will have to decide what's best for your group and what you prefer to play.
Note that I'm only talking about the 4 players metagame here. The toughness buffs from Monk are likely mandatory in 2 players and 3 players (With the current Twister build at least, but the concept of Tal Rasha 6P is mostly locking the Wizard build anyway). But maybe we just didn't think enough about it!
The build :
How it works :
I gave up the Roland 6P (250% Attack Speed Bonus) that I tried back in 2.4 to get the Roland 2P (Cooldowns Reset with Sweep Attack) along with the Akkhan 4P (50% RCR while in Akarat and 50% CDR on Akarat) instead.
One of the keys of the build is to use the Akkhan's Addendum in the Cube Weapon Slot which gives you Prophet Rune (150% Armor & Cheat Death Proc) and Embodiment of Power Rune (+5 Wrath Regen) of Akarat Champion and allows you to take Rally Rune.
The Rally Rune is basically resetting all your cooldowns when you use it. One of the other keys to the build is Akarat's Awakening that will reset your cooldowns everytime you block, as with both Justice Lantern and Hold Your Ground Passive, you can be block-capped. Thus, all of this will allow you to put down alot of Consecration very fast and will also allow you to handle your cooldowns and Zodiac ring procs easily, giving you enough freedom to focus on sweeping mobs.
The gameplay is quite obvious and simple : You have to stack Consecration on the floor to get healing, while Sweeping mobs wisely (No mindless spam) into the Twister range. Always use Consecration and Law just before using Rally Akarat (which will reset them) in order to enhance your Consecration Stacking and Zodiac Ring Procs.
You have to use Judgment wisely too, because it roots enemies, you have to figure out the best way to use it : Only on the mobs already stacked with Gathering Sweep into Twister Range, right before an Arcane CoE... Condemn is still very useful to pack density and sometimes keeping it together but Shield Glare may likely be a viable option to get 20% damage buff.
Conclusion :
It seems to me that the build is pretty strong in its current state and may likely be the best group setup while fishing for a dream map in high endgame. The coordination of the group and the teamplay is likely way more difficult to master than with a Monk though.
Remember that the metagame is never settled in stone and copy/paste builds from Rank 1 guys doesn't mean you are playing the best setup (Or the only viable setup). There are so many build-possibilities, so many group synergies that maybe nobody thought about yet, that you can't just say "If Rank 1 is playing this, it is the best build/setup, no matter what". No.
Thus I wanted to thank my mates LouLou, Hustle and S0RRY who are very smart/good players and always want to try out new builds and group setups. Thanks guys, keep up the good work
<WQW> Chewingnom
1
Paragon is surely more and more a problem. Capping is (in my opinion) not a good solution because the game is about farming, its a hack'n'slash. Guess one of the best solution could be to rework the xp curve so that it begins to be exponential at paragon 1000. Yeah, there will always be people higher than everyone else, but in the end, with exponential xp curve, they will be 100 or 200 paragon higher than average competitive players, not 500 or 600 because of linear xp curve.
1
Considering the actual state of the metagame, and all the lags issues, i would rather prefer lags fix to allow everybody to play new setups than a new patch because i'm under the impression we are far from a "best patch meta" in 4 players at least, mostly because of lag issues.
SWK monk seems to sit here in the meta just because we cant bring another real dps build without lagging and crashing the game. At least with SWK you can hope to blow the pack even with lags. I dont know about you, but it just reminds me the trials from the previous patch.
Having a metagame tied to the lag is not really sane imo, and a new patch will not be a good thing if the lags are the same and we are forced to play in a specifical setup to lag less, its not the spirit of the game for me. I want to try all the setups I want to and have fun.
In next patch what ? We will just replace the hype DPS build and replace it by the new hype DPS build. And if the new hype DPS build is lagging too much, we will stay with Dart WD or something else which is efficient but suboptimal, so what ?