Volley Fire adds a total of...four?

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1453R wrote:

Ehh, don't let Hikaru get to you too much. (S)he's one of those who gets up into the upper tippy-top echelons of level 95+ Uber minmaxery, which is great if that's what you're looking for. Just gotta take Hikaru's advice with a bit of a grain of salt if you're shooting for a deliberate tier 2 build like Barrage anything-but-Reach.

Take your concept as far as you can, and when you find out how far that is figure out if there's another way you could've taken it that might've gone further. Or figure out your next concept. Not everybody needs to farm Uber Atziri, and if nobody ever played the funky off-beat builds everyone says are #Mediocre, nobody'd ever figure out what the next Great Thing is.

I doubt I'll make such a build because it simply doesn't suit my interests. I like indirect things, or things that require interesting and/or specific mechanics in different ways. Mjolner, four totems, traps, and mines suit me. A Harvest using Writhing Jars to spawn enemies that explode your Herald of Ice to deal damage also highly interests me.

Unfortunately, all of those builds require a lot to set up, and usually require a lot of currency. Some of those require higher level characters regardless of currency and gear. Most require specific gear, which makes it even harder than currency alone. A Voll's Devotion isn't problematic because of the 18 ex (cheapest and corrupted with no special value other than being the cheapest available), it's problematic because I'm relying on an Atziri's Foible to get most of my attribute requirements. Getting all the specific gear is the issue.

Getting a Barrage Volley Fire build going would be easy and cheap, but it just doesn't interest me.

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1453R wrote:

Ehh, don't let Hikaru get to you too much. (S)he's one of those who gets up into the upper tippy-top echelons of level 95+ Uber minmaxery, which is great if that's what you're looking for.

It's "he", but I do genuinely appreciate you being gender-conscious. So many people assume default male in online games--sometimes myself included, and that's a problem I should fix.

Heh...you might be less impressed when you learn I did it mostly because 'Hikaru' is more feminine than not in the original Japanese, but yeah. I try to give the benefit of the doubt in any situation where it's unclear, though I'll admit to being guilty of assuming that "XxXLordHeadshotzXxX" and the like is going to trend male. Fortunately most of those are too illiterate to forum so it's not usually an issue! :P

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Natharias wrote:

I doubt I'll make such a build because it simply doesn't suit my interests. I like indirect things, or things that require interesting and/or specific mechanics in different ways. Mjolner, four totems, traps, and mines suit me. A Harvest using Writhing Jars to spawn enemies that explode your Herald of Ice to deal damage also highly interests me.

Unfortunately, all of those builds require a lot to set up, and usually require a lot of currency. Some of those require higher level characters regardless of currency and gear. Most require specific gear, which makes it even harder than currency alone. A Voll's Devotion isn't problematic because of the 18 ex (cheapest and corrupted with no special value other than being the cheapest available), it's problematic because I'm relying on an Atziri's Foible to get most of my attribute requirements. Getting all the specific gear is the issue.

Getting a Barrage Volley Fire build going would be easy and cheap, but it just doesn't interest me.

Harvest...using Writhing Jars...to trip Herald of Ice blasts.

You might want to skip a step or two there, man. I get that indirect things appeal, but even under ludicrously ideal circumstances...:

Writhing Jar uses 10.4 charges (16 charges base minimum, *.65 for reduced charges from max belt mod and Arcane Chemistry), and returns an absolute maximum of:

2 critters, assume both die to crits whilst status-effected and you hit all your RNG rolls. Pathfinder, w/Master Surgeon and Veteran Bowyer, using the Harvest axe and Poacher's Mark. 2 charges * 3.4 (100% Bowyer + 100% Poacher's Mark + 40% tree Increased charges gained), +2 for Harvest crit charges, +2 for 10% charge-on-crit from Surgeon.
.
..
...

: 10.8 charges. If you kill both critters with a status-inflicting crit after rolling several perfect mods on some difficult-to-acquire items and setting up your skill and passive tree specifically to do this one thing, AND you hit both of your 10% chances on Master Surgeon...you get just enough charges to repeat your attack without any other external factors. All to deal two base sub-500 damage ice novas to anything near the worms.

I mean, you could. But I imagine that even folks who actively dislike the Evil Clearspeed Meta might find the pace of play for that build just a little bit, ahh...relaxed, I suppose?

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1453R wrote:

Heh...you might be less impressed when you learn I did it mostly because 'Hikaru' is more feminine than not in the original Japanese, but yeah.

Uh... it's a pretty unisex name in my experience? Looking at wikipedia, it seems like there are a larger number of famous female Hikarus in real life and a larger number of male Hikarus in fictional media, neither by an overwhelming margin. To be honest, I only knew of 2 female Hikarus and 3 male Hikarus before now (admittedly, 2 of the male Hikarus were fictional and neither of the female Hikarus were fictional, with the fictional ones being a character on Star Trek and the main character of Hikaru no Go).

Anyway, my username is kind of a similar level of maturity as LordHeadshotz (though without the XxXs), given that it's not based around any real Japanese names, but instead just a direct translation of my pre-age-13 username, ShiningDarkness :P

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HikaruYami wrote:

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1453R wrote:

Heh...you might be less impressed when you learn I did it mostly because 'Hikaru' is more feminine than not in the original Japanese, but yeah.

Uh... it's a pretty unisex name in my experience? Looking at wikipedia, it seems like there are a larger number of famous female Hikarus in real life and a larger number of male Hikarus in fictional media, neither by an overwhelming margin. To be honest, I only knew of 2 female Hikarus and 3 male Hikarus before now (admittedly, 2 of the male Hikarus were fictional and neither of the female Hikarus were fictional, with the fictional ones being a character on Star Trek and the main character of Hikaru no Go).

Anyway, my username is kind of a similar level of maturity as LordHeadshotz (though without the XxXs), given that it's not based around any real Japanese names, but instead just a direct translation of my pre-age-13 username, ShiningDarkness :P

Heh, well. Maybe I've just encountered more female Hikarus than I have male ones - I knew the name swung both ways but it's always tended towards female in my brainspace. Ah well. Wasn't going to comment on the LightDark thing, figured that was a little too weeaboo for these forums :P

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Vipermagi wrote:

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1453R wrote:

I mean, you could. But I imagine that even folks who actively dislike the Evil Clearspeed Meta might find the pace of play for that build just a little bit, ahh...relaxed, I suppose?

You do realise that each worm killed generates a charge for each of your three or four worm jars, right :) It's a pretty ridiculous build.

Will have to check that video when things slow down a bit around here. That makes more sense, though even then it seems like a lot of faff and bother to go through when you could Echo a Frost Nova instead and use your flasks for actually useful things.

Spoiler on the build: it's pretty average (albeit intensely amusing/silly) as far as ordinary clearspeed goes (the build topic also has a link to play in gorge, as an example), but it is _holy shit amazing_ for Hall of Grandmasters O.o I've never seen anything breeze through the hall like that. Thank goodness no flasks are allowed for the grandmasters themselves or someone might copy the build, submit to GGG, and make the hall even harder....

I really want to try that build now. I'll have to make it on standard at some point.

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HikaruYami wrote:

but it is _holy shit amazing_ for Hall of Grandmasters O.o I've never seen anything breeze through the hall like that.

Shoot, Hoi explosions are secondary damage, aren't they? I never noticed before. But then, if block is the issue, shouldn't a generic Vortex build do just as well?

Spoilers: I haven't even clicked that link let alone watched any Writhing Harvest Hoi vids

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adghar wrote:

But then, if block is the issue, shouldn't a generic Vortex build do just as well?

Ahahah, if you can manage to self-cast vortex that fast while moving then sure, you could fast-clear the hall of grandmasters with it :P

It's a full 6-hall run done in under 5:30. I can look online for "hall of grandmasters speedruns" and nothing seems to come _close_ (specifically per-wing. There's one video that seems to be of a similar length... for a single wing).

The ultimate in Barrage w/ Volley Fire:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxT1hfOEmNE