Architect Ultra Challenge: Into the Darkness

Crab Tank +4x8 1:35 with liberal inspiration use, and several deaths.

Kill Blazes first, Lts seconds, Sparks Third, then everything else.

- Still too long.
- Still some tough spots with too many random Blaze Bosses.
- In more than one place I got 2 or more blaze bosses.
- In all locations I needed 65% defense to softcap. Without a minimum of 65% defense I was instantly dead. However, once all the buffers were dead, 45% defense was sufficient for 3 to 6 leftovers, but in some cases I needed 55% or 65% until I got them cut down to only 2 or 3 bosses left.
- In many locations I appeared to need 75% defense to softcap.
- In two or three locations I appeared to need 95%+ Defense to softcap.
- Once or twice I not only needed the 95% defense, I also needed 85% resist, the spike damage was just insane. These appeared to be areas with multiple Blaze Bosses. Or I was just having horrid luck.

I love hard, but It's still too hard and too long. I can't imagine ever leading a team into something like this. I think it would take 2 to 4 builds like mine to shore up a team to be able to handle this. 2+Vengeance, or 3 to 4 with no vengeance fodder. That means It'd likely insta-squish with extreme prejudice the average team.

I may try it with my Fortunata later.
I take that back, after noting 9 of 12 have status protection, and the other three have Thaw(Clear Mind), anything relying on any form of control is going to be facing Mag 11 to Mag ?? status protection, depending on how many CMs get cast. The Fort wouldn't have a prayer with her control gutted. She'd be better off going NW, but with no resistance and no +HP, she'd still likely get slaughtered. Not worth the trouble.

Note: I didn't "measure" defense values. However, If I was getting hit repeatedly, I'd add another small luck. There were many times that with 3 small lucks I was still hit repeatedly and the 4th small luck was enough to stem the tide. Not exactly scientific.

It was "Into the Light".

Yes, my kill speed in tank-mode is slow. The only thing that ups a crabs kill speed to scrapper levels is the pets, which die way too fast in content like this.

ST I'm 135 raw dps x 1.2 Venom Grenade = 162 dps. 95% of that is Lethal Damage. I can kill a pylon, but only barely.
AOE is similarly weak and small radius.

The offensive build tops 200 ST and Doubles or more the AoE, but I don't think she'd have a prayer of surviving. Spike damage resistance only 1600 vs 4000 for the tank build. HP Replacement is more than double for the tank build. While HP replacement was never really a problem, spike damage resistance was. There were plenty of times I got beat down fast enough (sub 3 to 5 seconds) that the other build would not have been able to react quickly enough.

SO....Elec/Energy brute with alpha and tier one judgement 1 hour 10 min ish. Killed everything on the map. Thanks Gnarl I had fun =)

Into the Darkness at +4/x2 on my stone/fire/earth tank. I found it fairly boring: nothing was doing worthwhile amounts of damage to me, so it was simply a matter of hammering buttons for several minutes to take down each objective. It took about 50 minutes to complete the objectives.

I also started it at +4/x8 and completed the first two objectives (a boss and an altar). Bit more of a challenge: I had to hit my self-heal once during the boss fight, and I pulled out a Shivan at the 15-minute mark to speed things up. I estimate I could complete it in about two and a half hours, including breaks to craft additional Recovery Serums and grab blue inspirations.

I think I have the fastest time so far: 29 minutes, +4/x8, on my DM/SD scrapper. Of course, that's using inspirations, and I had 5 deaths (mostly do to not paying attention).

My strategy was to go for Blazes of any variety, then Ragers, then Sparklings. I tried the map twice before without finishing just to get an idea of where all the spawn points were, and started off by zerging for altars. Once they were dead, I went for the speaking bosses, then mystery. I used aggro as my stealth (when you are at aggro cap, new enemies won't immediately attack you, allowing a fast player to escape combat by going towards other mobs). In order to survive, I used one sturdy, one luck, OwtS, and the t4 regen destiny. That put me at 75% smashing/lethal res, enough defense for Ragers, and about 110 hps if I use Siphon Life whenever its up. With double stacked and HOed out AD, I shrugged off defense debuffs and mezs (I have close to 40 mag of protection with double stacked AD and OwtS running).

Unlike normal groups, I used a lot of movement in combat, trying to stay at the ideal range, which is just outside of melee, making them want to engage in melee but being unable to. I abused my burst AoE abilities by attacking the target boss groups with a rush of Fireball, Shield Charge, Ion Judgement, DC, Fireball. This left most of the minions and lts dead or at least very injured, and then I cleaned up with dark maul and fireball, siphon lifing as needed.

Overall, I'd say it was challenging from a survivable standpoint, but not necessarily from a DPS standpoint. I was much focused more on staying on my feet than I was on actually dealing damage, and mostly used damage as a way of reducing threats quickly. Without insps, I would have to be much more cautious, and would take about 45 mins to an hour. I wouldn't mind throwing in an EB or AV to test DPS, though I understand keeping it a survival challenge. I probably can cut a minute or two out by not dying, but I'd say it won't go down much further for me on this character, until I get Demonic Aura anyway. Maybe on a more survivable character with more focus on AoE it could be done more quickly. I'm guessing a SS/Fire Brute could do fairly well at it, though my personal bet for the best would be something like a soft-capped Willpower/Fire tanker.

I think I might do a video of me doing the map, just to give people some ideas for speeding up times. I'll admit, I was actually surprised out how fast that run was, even with the deaths. But then again, this character has done a lot of pretty amazing things for me, like soloing a MoITF in under an hour (58 mins at the 4th Romi kill), and could not have done nearly as well without incarnate abilities/inspirations. I actually think the no-death/temps/insp run was the most impressive thing I've seen because I know my character would almost certainly take more time under the same settings.