Season Three, Event 7: Descent

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Morsexier написал:

I call bullshit on anyone at GGG getting mid 20s.

Wait. Are you saying this because you alpha testers didn't get to test this at all? Did that actually happen?

I see the top witch is 69th overall at level 17. Are they really that bad for this race or did none of the normal witch racers play them because of the cold resist mobs?

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StarlightGamer написал:

At first I intended to go with sword and shield on my ranger. I quickly discovered that wasn't going to be an option as I continued to get only bow support. I didn't manage to get any good gems (Power Siphon and Freeze Mine, thanks RNG), so I was bow until the end.

But it was a learning experience. I went out the evasion route to get defense in order to survive. I had a somewhat difficult time with the first stage, given the lack of AoE and slow movement and attack speed, so I thought it was a good choice. But in the end, physical enemies weren't much of a threat compared to the elemental enemies, at least up till the first Cruel area which is as far as I got. So it seems offense is the way to go.

Only got to level 12. :|

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Edit: Oh, and I must have spent 5 minutes running around on the third level looking for the boss. Somehow I thought the arch just before the boss was the portal to the next area and it wasn't active because I hadn't killed the boss yet, so I ran back looking for it and wasted a bunch of time. I could have probably squeezed another level out if I hadn't been stupid.

And based on what gems the Marauder and Duelist get, it's no surprise that they dominate the leaderboards.

Ranger can get LA/Fork from chests. Just getting to that is rough. By the way, you have the right idea. Everything is pretty easy up till cruel but you will wish you elemental defences out the rear come cruel. I imagine some of the top racers got great RNG with resists on gear. Some of them are just that talented.

4th place shadow, lvl 16. Reached forbidden ruins, 3 zones further than the first descent, and likely would have done much better if not the for 10+ minutes wasted in the merveil zone. Took the correct chests this time and ended up with solid gear and much better life+mana+manaregen, though my damage was slightly lower as i couldnt manage to roll a +1 cold item. Even found wanderlust, which was nowhere near as awesome as it is in standard races, since rushing is hard to impossible in most of the later areas due to the lack of ability to tp out to refill flasks (good) and the tight and desync-prone map layouts (bad). It still came in fairly useful in the merveil zone for obvious reasons.

Feedback:

- Improve orb drops by a massive amount. If theyre currently better than the standard modes, no ones noticed.

- Add more gems and basic gear to the starter chest, and do the same for later gear choice chests. The amount of builds and options available atm is dismally low.

- Replace some of the mazy indoor areas with open outdoor areas, or just more open areas in general. That horrible submerged clone with chill + chains + coldsnap + exploders is a desync nightmare for short ranged classes and would be a great candidate for replacement. Its also far harder than the 3 zones after it, bosses aside.

GG all, see you next race!

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Morsexier написал:

I call bullshit on anyone at GGG getting mid 20s.

Wait. Are you saying this because you alpha testers didn't get to test this at all? Did that actually happen?

Yes this was only internally tested at GGG.

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xenogias написал:

I see the top witch is 69th overall at level 17. Are they really that bad for this race or did none of the normal witch racers play them because of the cold resist mobs?

Look at the gem selections the witch has. The choices are horrible. Fireball/Zombie to start? Zombies? Really? Fireball is ok in the rare instances things are grouped tightly.

Then we get spark/Firestorm or FP/Ice Spear. Meh. Got to 15 with either choice. Ice is horrible in the statues area. The other pair is very mana inefficient at the start.
Witches are in gear hell, like every other race. No stat points, relying on drops. Need every bit of life from items, oh, and stat points, to wear anything. At least in non-decent races, we can hit nessa up for stat ammys.

Currency is a waste for the most part, theres not much time to waste rolling in an hour league, except for trans/alchs.

Fork/minion life? Gotta remember to hit the other chest there because it cant possibly be as useless. Fork would have been nice, but see: stat point hell. 1 dex short the whole race. Not that I found anything ES with a blue/green link. Blew every piece of currency trying to land a +dex roll. Hit +str on just about everything. Not that +str is used on skill requirements seen so far.

Oh and resists. witch doesn't get any freebies from the passive tree.

So yeah, there's so much "wrong" with the witch for descent, that can't be salvaged with a town run, at least compared to cleave...

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Morsexier написал:

Yes this was only internally tested at GGG.

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Charanjaydemyr написал:

We did not get to test it. There are some devs who claim they can get low to mid 20s. Yet to see it.

I don't understand why this would happen. There seems to be 2 glaring issues with this event.

1. RNG is worse then previous events. Even knowing whats in the chests. The article says a couple times that they tried to limit some of the RNG from previous events.

2. Balance. The classes are insanely imbalanced. Chris has said that the point is for classes to compete with each other, but that doesn't make sense considering the top player gets extra points, and everyone gets extra points based on level reached. People who like to play certain classes are getting screwed.

I don't understand why during whats supposed to be a closed beta, they would leave something this big up to internal testing only. It shouldn't even matter if alpha testers would get an advantage, because again, closed "beta". Why bother having an alpha test realm if its not going to be used for everything remotely important?

Testing in general appears to be in a complete mess right now, and this is just another huge example of it. Either start actually using alpha testing for everything since its a beta, or find an entire new team of internal testers who are remotely competent.

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We did not get to test it. There are some devs who claim they can get low to mid 20s. Yet to see it.

I wanna see that. I want most devs participate and prove they can get level 25.

This is only possible if the gems had 20% quality there were far more currency drops, mbos had less hp, yieled more exp and had a lower density.Also the old phase run was enabled.
Or the Frozen abyss was a higher level zone earlier.

Finally got to try Descent for the first time tonight. Decided to go super slow and get a feel for the enemies and general layout of the areas. Only got to level 13 as a Duelist but next time I'll actually push it and shoot for at least 16. I definitely agree that the orb drops and loot from chests could really be improved. I know they're trying to make descent hard but without better drops theres no point in deleting the characters when the league ends. Otherwise I had a blast and will continue to participate in as many of these as possible.

My gear:


I definitely think I could have gotten at least a couple levels higher, but I was playing it safe and going super slow.

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Morsexier написал:

Yes this was only internally tested at GGG.

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Charanjaydemyr написал:

We did not get to test it. There are some devs who claim they can get low to mid 20s. Yet to see it.

I don't understand why this would happen.

Probably so there wouldn't be cries about alpha players having a substantial advantage in the races. PCGamer was also given information for an exclusive unveiling of the event, so any leak would have been bad.