[Guide] Zodiac Rend (Season 20)

I think I spotted the problem…
You’re bouncing around on a pogo stick instead of spinning around like a top.

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Amazing job, brother! At least one of us “futility bros” has broken the logjam now… hopefully that’s a good sign for me…

Lol, yeah, well, it would sure help if “hip-hop barb” wasn’t like 7 GRs weaker than “dizzy barb”!

What’s your PB with Rend, again? :wink:

Ey guys! Just found a double crit + strengt primal CoE and now I’m wondering if I should witch to the crimson setup instead of F+R. 2350 para at the moment and trying to finish a GR132, allready been close a couple of times but wondering if it would be easier with crimson as it seems 80% of top 100 barbs is using it.

Hey BB,

If you are talking about non-season, then I recommend you stick with the “core” setup. Crimson is much more fragile and I expect you’ll find yourself dying a lot if you swap.

Yeah I’m playing season so have a fourth cube slot

Hamelin is an interesting boss. Because of the way he spawns adds, you can kill him almost exponentially faster as your damage increases.

I think what happens is that when he spawns rats, he keeps spawning them until a certain number are on the ground. So if you do enough damage, you can keep him summoning indefinitely.

And the rate of summoning seems to increase the faster you kill those rats, so maybe it’s like he summons at 3x rate till Y rats are on the ground, then 2x rate till there’s 2Y rats, and then 1x rate till 3Y rats… or something like that.

I’ve noted that when pushing high with Leapquake, you can’t do enough damage to make this happen without both a power and a channeling pylon (as a result, Hamelin is a worse boss than Saxtris or Binder)

Luckily, Rend doesn’t have that issue!

Both the CoE/Crimson and the F+R / MoC setups are good. F+R does a little more damage in general, while Crimson is a bit more fluid to play and also gets a bit of damage boost from channeling pylons.

If you have good gear for both setups, then try both and just pick whichever feels more natural to you.

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I just assumed that because he spawns the rats at 75%, 50% and 25% HP, with sufficient damage and area damage killing the rats just causes him to hit the next HP breakpoint before the previous breakpoint’s adds have finished spawning, so that by the time you’re on the adds for 25% you’ve still got some from 75% and 50%, leading to huge numbers of adds for your AD to work on. I just know that any time I get this boss, the time for 75% to dead is shorter than 100% to 75%.

Hmm, I feel like he can spawn rats even near 100% life. (This is part of what makes him less good than Saxtris for Leap- those “early” rats eat Stricken stacks). And the total number of rats also seems to increase dramatically if you are killing them quickly. (Even while staying within, say, the 75-50% “increment”).

For reference, 2 videos, both Hamelin at high push. First one, just a power, second one, power + channeling. Note the rat spawns…

Hamelin fight 1 - YouTube

Hamelin fight 2 - YouTube

I think there may be some truth to this. I just reviewed my 132, 138 and 141 hammy kills and he definitely kept spawning more rats at 132. 138 and 141, I couldn’t kill them fast enough so he stopped after his threshold was reached.

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Yeah. It might actually be kind of a combo of what MB is saying and what we’re noticing- i.e. maybe he can summon a few rats anytime, but he only has the potential for a huge fountain of rats at the 75%, 50%, and 25% life points-- but in each of these cases, he keeps summoning until the condition of “X rats on the ground” is met, meaning that if you can do damage quickly enough, you can keep the fountain going all the way from 75% life down to 0%.

The most extreme example of the “Ratsplosion” I’ve encountered was when I was pushing with Pro-Slam, and got Hamelin and a Power. After a little Stricken stacking, I took him from around 90% life to dead in less than 20 seconds… just absolutely insane. Really wish I had recorded it!

Come on, y’all, let’s leave 2020 in the past!

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Season 21 hasn’t ended yet!!! Rats everywhere…

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Finally managed to clear a GR132 for rank 57 Europe! This one was tough and I spent way more keys than I thought I would. Still have 400 keys left though so guess GR133 is next.

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Grats.
Now they’ve fixed the EU leaderboards, I guess I’ll see how close I can catch up.

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Thanks! Yeah ive only been farming Keys and doing rats for a few days while waiting for the leaderboards to get fixed. Now I’m looking forward to some serious fishing hehe

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Would you augment these alt chests? Or save for the top 1% upgrade?

From left to right, 1) current chest full aug 2) massive ehp upgrade 3) side grade of current chest with better secondary

https://imgur.com/a/cT5mr1D

Id put a 150 in the far right chest. Using the gg Allres/elite reduction/rend is really only needed if your running crimson at high paragon. On top of that the real deal breaker is the fact that the middle is only 10% rend. For core go max damage!!!

Edit: you already have a 150 in the left one. Just stick with that. 4 strength and 1 all resist and better secondary wont make a meaningful difference.

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Yea I don’t have the spare 150 gems available to aug side grades so I really have to consider it before cubing them. Guess I’ll just keep these extras just in case. Dang life of a hoarder haha.

EU, Season 22, Rank 220 Solo Barb, GR129, Paragon 2004, 21.0K STR…
https://i.imgur.com/zeIazsi.jpg

Equipped weapon 1: The Slanderer
Equipped weapon 2: Little Rogue
Equipped ring 1: Focus
Equipped ring 2: Restraint

Cube Weapon: Ambo’s Pride
Cube Armour: Mantle of Channelling
Cube Jewellery: Band of Might
Cube Wildcard: Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac

Associated screenshots of Summary / Records…
https://imgur.com/a/udi4inW

This matches my highest non-seasonal clearance which was done on a Barb with around 4100 paragon. So the 4th Cube slot was essentially worth roughly 2100 paragon to me.

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A gif-worthy accomplishment