I've been running a lot of rune/sacred rage tests for both any% and glitchless, and I'm starting to think rune is the correct mastery for any%. I decided to record a run as a response to a discussion I was having with mrtiger in the leaderboard restructure thread, but figured I'd post it here so I wouldn't clutter another thread. lol
This is a 1:10:44 stopped at act IV. I believe, under the current rules, this is technically a WR run for any% Hades. This is the first time I built dragon hunter, so I believe I mistakenly sold a boots of journeying (may have been a different run), I had a rough Egypt, and I also stupidly died to both Cerberus and Hades, resulting in ~3 minutes of time loss due to deaths and likely more to just my general confusion. lol I had previously run a 1:08:32 (unrecorded) through act IV without picking a second mastery, so I'm not 100% convinced dragon hunter is the automatic best build, though I'm guessing it probably is.
I'm positive Ragnarok should take less than 38 minutes without any major time losses (I ran a rune/storm test, which was bad, through act V in that time), so this build should easily be able to be at ~1:45 total for a Ragnarok any%.
I don't know yet what the final build should be, the best way to look for equipment, when to loot, how to lose health after leveling, etc. so I'm sure there's more time to save from these tests.
Anyway, I just wanted to share this with anyone who might be looking to run any%. LiveSplit's global hotkeys stop me from performing the skill point glitch, so I have to run windowed and switch focus to start/stop WSplit which is a massive pain in the ass, so I don't think I'll be recording any% runs myself. lol
Good to see it summed up. As mentioned in the other topic, i guess i'd sum up my point of view as well here, because in the end there is still a ruleset to define which might be very important.
So in my Opinion, there is no "the correct mastery" when it comes to Any% runs. In the end, what matters at most is the movement speed. As long as you get the movement speed at least close to the cap, you can do the run quite fast. Each mastery-combination can get enough damage-output to get the bosses down in about the same time (i've tested alot with that, but there wasn't really a big difference as long as there's at least one mastery that can deal some damage... even Nature/thieving can do it in a quite good amount of time). So what matters most is the "how do I get movement speed?". For Rune, it's easy: just keep the rage running. But Also other mastery combinations can get a quite decent movement speed. The best movement speed i've got with the Haruspex was a consistent 163% (23% movement speed, 30% skills and 2 Hermes Sandale pieces=10%). Also the times you mentioned seem to be a whole amount better than what is possible with the Haruspex, but when it comes to a very good Haruspex run, it might end up in quite the same spot. Actually, I've made a 1:09:51 run on August 5 2017. I was a bit lazy submitting it (the leaderboards were quite inactive that time) and i've made an incredible sub-4-hour Any%-legendary-Run a week later that I totally missed highlighting/submitting it. The VoD is gone now, sadly, so i'll never submit that one to the leaderboards. I normally did not plan to mention that i made that time since it's a bit embarrassing that i forgot to make a vod for an actually good world record run... but it's just for the comparison. The sum of best segments in my Livesplit (I still have the 1:09:51 splits) shows a best possible time of 1:07:26. if we take into consideration that this run was done before the Ragnarök Expansion and that we had five domains in the tower of justice instead of three (i'd say it's about 1 minute of walking), we end up in a pretty similar time as you mentioned. Also i might be quite bad in the Ragnarök area currently (that's why i only have a 1:52:31 right now), but if i do some training, i might get into similar times as you're mentioning.
So... all of that is just to point out that in my opinion, it's more about the own taste which masteries you take. I'll most likely stick to my Haruspex since I'm most used to it.
But still, there is one big question linked with all of this:
The main reason why i wanted to keep the Hades(AE) subcategory alive is for the people that might not have bought the ragnarök DLC and still want to compete on the leaderboards. So I've thought about it as a category to be done explicitely if you don't have the DLC. For a class like the haruspex, there is technically no difference in running to Hades, splitting there to compete with the Hades(AE) leaderboard and go ahead through the DLC area. However, if someone is using the rune mastery, it could be questionable whether or not he should be able to compete on the leaderboards, since only people who bought the DLC can access the rune mastery. So if the rune mastery gives an unfair advantage in the run, that would mean that we have to ban the rune mastery for the Hades(AE) category. So that's why i mostly wrote up all the stuff above, because as far as I could say right now, it still should be possible for players without the rune mastery to compete with the players that use the Rune mastery (even if they have some RNG to fight against). That would technically make your 1:10:44 Run the actual WR for Any% Hades(AE).
And that is the main question that comes with my post: Do you guys think we should allow the Rune mastery only for Ragnarök/Accomplished Hero runs, or also for the Hades(AE) category?
I'm not surprised at all by Rune being better/more consistent than dream(after all a perfected dragon hunter run allow you to skip boot all together), but damn didn't think it was THAT consistent, like holy shit. I'm my head always being at 40% hp was way harder^^
I'm also really curious about that 1 mastery run, like how do that even work, do you just seal of fate every boss???
Speaking of rune, you seem to never use the Guardians stone power, which i don't really get since at max power it's incredibly powerful.
@mrtiger
Hopefully "correct" didn't sound stuck-up or something--I use it interchangeably with "good" because I'm an idiot. lol I have very little experience running haruspex for any% and those times you mention are much faster than I expected (heartbreaking to hear about the legendary run, too), but I think there is one potentially significant difference between a haruspex strat and a rune strat: Greece. After I hit level 2, I'm at 156% movespeed for the rest of Greece and finish consistently ~20 minutes, which is, I think, ~3 minutes faster than ql28's act I split. To be fair, I've been losing that time in Egypt, but I think that's my fault, not the strat's.
I'm generally a clumsy player and haven't optimized the rune strat yet, so I think these times will go down over time with better players, but I suppose only time will tell if there really is a difference between haruspex and rune or not. Your concern about allowing those who don't own the Ragnarok DLC to compete was also my concern, but I think you're right that I'm probably overestimating rune's performance vs haruspex's ideal performance.
I only ever tested guardian stones once and thought it was a bad skill, so I've never considered it since--probably the same oversight that made me think sacred rage wasn't a useful speedrunning skill for quite a while. lol
For single mastery I used the same DPS skills as my accomplished hero runs. I wasn't doing it because I thought it was better, I was just going to test skinchanger, but put more points into health than I meant to and decided to be lazy. lol
It is tough sometimes to stay under 40% hp! lol I think part of developing this strat will be looking at how to level at the right times to lose health quickly afterward. atm I double-up performing the glitch with losing health a bit, which I think is good, but I still level at some very awkward times. lol
