Did you ever see the GR Tier vs GR Time thread? It’s worth a read- the whole thing from start to finish- with a lot of interesting discussion of this stuff.
Anyway, I agree the method I suggest isn’t a perfect way of doing this, but still a good shorthand that is much better than nothing.
Hmm, well, I think there are a few problems here.
For one thing: how are we supposed to know if a player/clear is “average”, “above average”, “good”, “great”, “world-class”, etc. I mean, especially when we need to put that in terms of keys spent.
For instance: it ended up taking me nearly 3000 keys to bag my GR 138 with Earthquake. But, I also almost did it on around the 200th key- just missed by a few seconds, and only because I made a tiny misstep around the 10 minute mark. And, I had a few other close calls in-between those two marks- 200 and 3000. So, which is the “true” figure, 200 or 3000? It obviously could have happened at the 200th key… but it didn’t.
Or, for looking at the “down” approach for a bunch of these sets, I’ve been looking at 엔류’s clears. And, on the one hand, he’s basically the best Barb player ever. But on the other hand, his IK 149, Raekor HOTA 150, LOD 150, and H90 146, all of which are at or near the top for those sets, were done with a paragon between 11887 and 11892. Actually, if you rule out LoD, they were all done between 11887 and 11888- a single paragon level. That means he didn’t play very many rifts before he bagged the clear. So, keys spent = ???, but it sure seems like: not that many.
Anyway, all this is why I think we should just look at THE BEST clears at a few different paragon ranges, and forget about keys spent, or throwing out outliers who are “too good”, or anything like that.
I mean, we already know the score here, right? On average, spending more keys increases your chance of getting a great clear. But, there’s no reason you couldn’t open into a 4-corner Festering with Horror/Mother, Illusionist Nightmares, perfect pylons, and Saxtris for a boss, on key #100, key #50, or key #1.
LOL, well, I am not a “generalist” like you! There are probably only 3 or 4 people playing the game now who could reasonably beat me at Leapquake… but there are also probably only 3 or 4 people playing the game who I could beat at Rend!