@drmalawi it was a doom knight pack in CS IIRC because he didn’t opt for Nihlathak runs
@ResTTe Indreks was HC though which is worse than any SC run IMO as you just lose everything you’ve done with one mistake. And prior to coming here I played the same way as you mentioned — HC P8 only with no extended stash etc.
Yeah I guess "impressive" in relation to 99ing just means dedication to the grind, both playing underpowered while gearing up and then for XP with such limitations as mentioned.
Other than that, what's really "impressive" in D2 anyway. To me it's certainly not "skills" in the classical sense because D2 is a game with a low skill ceiling. In my teens I played RTS games competitively, anyone who did that will agree that skills required for "high-level" D2 gameplay are laughable in comparison to esport titles. Nowadays I enjoy D2 much more as it's more compatible with real life and getting older. Less stressful, doesn't require training to stay in shape, and you make constant progress even if running rather casually. There's still a technical element with the efficiency meta, trying to get good times etc., though it's also somewhat reduced and basically "good execution" just means "no misclicks". It can be difficult to pull off, but in the end even that isn't really comparable or competitive either, because every situation is individual due to the impact of gear and map differences.
For me I guess D2 success in the end is down to a combination of some gaming fundamentals, knowledge/experience and an experimental nature in trying different builds and setups. At least those factors + dedication + RNG seems to be the recipe for fruitful D2 gaming. I think a good example is the 99er Sorc I made for this thread, who peaked at ~4.4m XP/h for 98-99 while chars before her barely scratched 3m XP/h. That was mostly down to build/gearing approach, whereas execution played a smaller role in comparison.
@ResTTe You could also ask is a 300 hour 99er even impressive compared to a 1000 hour 99er . Imo there are many ways things can be super impressive in d2. Efficiency/skill is one way, dedication/long grind is another. Feats in HC is another, and interesting theorycrafting is another and I'm sure there are many more. You can certainly do impressive things in the game with super low skills or efficiency imo. And yeah I think perkele is by far the most impressive entrant here (though as ffs mentioned klaus might be more impressive for other reasons). One of my favorite spf threads in general.
@ffs can't good execution always be boiled down to "no misclicks" in every game? @drmalawi I can believe that other games are much more complex, but I would guess they don't often get analyzed as deeply as we do in d2. Imo it's tough to call d2's theorycrafting simple by any metric when we're making simulators for optimization 20 years after release.
Anyways I guess my point with those last two is that I do feel the skill ceiling and theorycrafting in d2 are remarkable even compared to other games. And they are 2 among many ways to do cool or impressive stuff in d2. Obvious caveat being that I don't play many, if any, of those other games . But if the skill was easy, we'd have a lot more impressive HoR entries than we do, and if the theorycrafting was easy I wouldn't have a library of like 100 bookmarks from this forum and we wouldn't be posting new stuff all the time.
D2 is Still like tic tac toe. Path of Exile is like Go. Poe is such complex game with so many variables that it is pretty much impossible to get a theoretical overview.
So any kind of d2 skill bragging is still like bragging about tic tac toe skills
The audience for d2 is also small. Also the single player aspect of d2 is pretty new. When d2 peaked it was basically all about dueling on bnet
If you played competitive PvP for d2, it had a pretty high skill ceiling (particularly 2v2) but trying to enforce rules for defensive play or life rep is extremely bothersome so without some in game limitation that holds it back quite a bit (particularly in 1v1). Still requires the same collection of skills to succeed— reaction speed, real time decision making, individual build knowledge, ability to recognize tendencies
@drmalawi im not willing to accept that. I can buy d2/poe = tictac/go. But the huge difference is you can't quickly get to a point at which you can't improve in d2. There are not new discoveries in tic tac toe, nor are there a couple of people who dominate tic tac toe efficiency in the pits . So even if the skill ceiling or theory ceiling or whatever is lower in d2, it still takes a lot of work/skill/time to approach that ceiling and few get close.
Lol @drmalawi and i had some further, likely pointless, debate on "is d2 hard" on discord. Probably have derailed way too much for this thread. But anyways, he made me reduce my statment of d2's difficulty (as related to efficiency) to this:
Expect to put in several hundred hours trying to improve if you want to achieve runs within ~25% as efficient as the Hall of Records record holders or other really good runners on the forum.
Kinda ridiculous, but I do say this in earnest, because "skillz" when comparing to RTS gameplayers and such apparently means different things than to someone like me. When I saw people talking about d2 being easy or simple, I expected after getting good gear and a couple of thousand runs under my belt, that I would be doing decently efficient runs. Here I am with ~800ish hours into the game and am not that close to doing so, but hope to make strides in that direction this year. Granted I haven't been grinding specific runs for efficiency that whole time, but I still think it's a lot of playing. And so to me, who has never been a competitive gamer in the past, this does not meet my definition of easy or "not requiring much skill". In reference to this actual thread, I tried pretty hard to improve my runtimes from 97-98 with my sorc and even after 80ish hours of doing the runs, I topped out around 4.7m exp/hr with most of the other sorcs in this thread reporting more in the mid 5's or even around 6m.
And sometimes I like to read back through old posts during lunch breaks and such (mainly thinking of super old posts in the d2 lounge), and its comforting to see that even gripphon took a couple of years to start becoming the efficiency monster he is today.
So yeah I'm in awe of some or your alls' skillz even if you think it's easy
You're all correct I have start many projects in the last year here. Have ran in to quite a few bumps. I have my fantastic 7, of which I made 7 characters, 1 of each class and that was going well. I formatted my computer, forgot to back them up and lost all of that.
I've created several other characters, some have lived, some have died. Just trying to find my place in what I like/want.
I then created a few different characters and was progressing just fine, upgraded my PC from windows 7 -> 10 and my game files some how corrupted.
So at the moment all I have is a Trapsin in hell and a new zerker barb that I just started. I know 99 is a long project so I was polling here to see if I should continue with my assassin or switch to a javazon. I enjoy both classes almost equally. They both require a lot of farming. So I was just asking to see what everyone else thought is all. I'm basically bare bones, lost everything so what more could I do?
@Disposition doing baal runs with zon is also pretty safe considering that her killing power is kinda immense. However, it is pretty easy to get rekt by a doll in the throne room even on players 1 even if you pay attention ^^
For me I guess D2 success in the end is down to a combination of some gaming fundamentals, knowledge/experience and an experimental nature in trying different builds and setups.
Don't forget having fun, the most important metric of d2 success in my book If fun isn't had, success for any long term goals is unlikely. That's what I've enjoyed about this challenge: different members have different motivations for their attempts, and with variability in drops it makes for interesting follows even if there are only so many options for the more efficient approaches in each class.
@Disposition my untwinked zon was pretty safe once she transitioned to Baals, but a trapper is much safer and therefore more forgiving in HC: higher life pool, CoS, good FHR breakpoints. Either one makes for a fun playthrough and good potential for 99er, zon likely faster and sin likely safer (all contingent on gear drops, of course).
Quiet in this thread with the OBP tourney going on. My Barb, Death, hit 95.5. No major drops, but the gambles and crafts were spectacular, and I have another 5 years added to my "no complaining" probationary period
As mentioned, Death got some Baal in as breaks while Quinta made the final push to 99 in November and December. During that time, he gambled this amulet:
It will be quite handy for Nihl! Then, as he approached 95.25, he crafted this amulet, which fit his needs beautifully (I thought I had taken a screenie from when it was gambled, but couldn't find it, so I just took one):
The FCR means he hits 105 FCR breakpoint on switch with double Wizzy, and the mana leech and MF are great modifiers to have. I ended up using an AR/ML ring with lightning resist and SoE for life leech, and he had nearly 200 MF for the Baal runs.
There were multiple trolls with Goreriders (3x Green and several rare). He also has some AR issues (69% cth with Baal), so metalgrid would be handy, and Highlord's might prompt a switch to FCR/ML ring despite sweet craft. He was averaging around 4 minutes per run, until another pair of Goblin Toe dropped around 95.4, upping crushing blow to 60%, and shaving ~20s off each run, largely from Lister and Baal.
He bails if Lister has Might or Fanaticism, and if a mana burn roll gets him stuck in dangerous situation (usually amp is involved), but otherwise he's doing full Baal runs with p1 Achmel. It should average out to 275 runs for the level, so ~138 left for the level. The only other drop of note was a Pul. He is still a Vex or Ohm short of Fortitude for Merc, and also has runes for Delirium except for a Lem. He has had two close calls with S&E due to <1000 HP from nasty Lister rolls, so definitely something to be alert to. Dolls and Gloams are annoying at times in the Throne Room, but haven't really been dangerous, so hopefully that continues. Having nearly maxed LR on Grief switch certainly helps with Gloams!
The limitation of no extended stash continues to be an interesting wrinkle, as he stashed the 50MF WTs, and now has only 3-5 1x1 spots open depending on how many flawless amethysts he has. Making the fortitude would help considerably, both from stash management and to finally drop the Duriels on the merc.
Keep up the good progress, everyone, especially @Luhkoh on the final level. I'm looking forward to renewed activity here once the OBP tourney wraps.
@PhineasB What an amulet! I mean the pitzerker amulet mainly but that life everlasting one too! I never really have done much with magic amulets so am not sure how rare getting one before 98 is, but i would want loads of idr from amulet and helm slots for barb, so ban on complaining indeed . Great progress on the barb. I've been getting some decent time in on Arkana despite working some overtime for a project due and traveling to a juggling festival this weekend. Lol been getting some runs in from the hotel room. A few nice finds too. I'll update monday!
So... Bobo has just reached lvl 97. Feeling alright/not too tired
He's growing strong and healthy. I feel there's not much to say here since all I did was run Baal a bunch of times (with the occasional trav run here and there.).
After lvling from 89 to 90 in trav I rerolled WSK maps untill I was satisfied. Map here.
Lvls 90-96 were fast paced. It took me a little while to learn when it was necessary to NOT engage with wave 5, but deaths derived from those mistakes weren't that costly. I died only once on each of those 6 lvls. Lvl 96-97 took a bit longer, as it'd be expected. I got close to 50% and then my computer started having some issues that prevented me from playing for more or less a week, but that was a proper rest for me and after that I was ready for that last 50% to finally reach this stage. I didn't die once during this lvl, so it seems that learning took place at last.
Trav runs were done all over the place. Whenever I felt like it. Here are the finds.
Luckily that was not all. I had some pretty nice finds on the way both from Baal himself and from his waves. Again, here are the finds.
I included almost everything in those albums linked above except this beauty. My favourite find from these 7 lvls:
So that's it for now. I may take a little break and then start my journey to 98.
Gratz to @PhineasB 's Death. His name is so cool. Almost too cool. Bobo is jealous XD. I've been using Gores, but if Goblins meant such a time save for you, I'll try them for the 97-98 grind and see how it goes for me.
And looking forward to your update tomorrow @Luhkoh
Cheers everyone!!!
DISCLAIMER: pics in the albums linked above may not be in chronological order.
I think @PhineasB meant he'd like to include Gores rather than Goblin Toe. Though both are strong. I've been both theorycrafting and in-game experimenting with WW Barb the last 1-2 weeks, and judging by the numbers Goblin Toe has the advantage of being slightly better vs. Baal. But Gores are stronger against everything else, including wave minions and bosses. Gore's advantage vs those is small either, but there are many instances where it applies as opposed to just the Baal fight, so in the end they should be a little faster even when including Baal.
Current lvl: 98.58
Approx. time to finish: 23.2 hours
Recent finds: steel carapace, ber rune!, war travs 37 , dragonscale (grailer), 4/-5 light facet, maras 25, telling of beads, azurewrath! (but not a grailer), pul, gut siphon, 2 jalals, horizons tornado
Nihlathak's been dropping pretty nice for me lately.
@Kinkara those are some nice Baal drops! Very nice progress
Hey guys, i played PoD for the last 3 weeks and it was pretty much fun. no that is done and i think im gonna try some wolcen. just doin an update of the current state of my pala until i dont know when^^
I really recomment that mod if u want somethin else for a couple of weeks, therefore its a pretty nice change imo.
Drops since last update:
tal armor, reapers, zaka, reapers, natures peace, ik armor, shadowdancers, mal, gaze, Ohm, thundergods, aldurboots 50res, rbf cold 3/3, Titans, + 2 seraphs, kiras 70 allres, eschuta +3 18% light, GC barb combat sk, GC bow sk, Gul, highlords, kiras 70, goreriders, Rbf cold 4/4, WC sk 29 life, mal, Gul, arach, bk4 (staying on dwarfstar), highlords, ist, deaths fathom, dungo 40/13, eth spirit keeper, GC passiv ama skiller 39 life, marrowwalk +2 19 str, arach, GC shapeshift sk, reapers, eth ginthers, zaka , titans
To me it's certainly not "skills" in the classical sense because D2 is a game with a low skill ceiling. In my teens I played RTS games competitively, anyone who did that will agree that skills required for "high-level" D2 gameplay are laughable in comparison to esport titles. Nowadays I enjoy D2 much more as it's more compatible with real life and getting older. 
