ME - Single Rune Solo Runs

mebengalsfan · July 2019

Some days I don't have the time to run ME with a group as it can take a bit longer do to increase in difficulty of enemies. I typically will run my ME for my Fighter and Cleric in groups playing as a support role and than my wizard I run through them alone and rather quickly. The last two or three days do to circumstances I decided to run all of the MEs solo.

I had no issues with my wizard or cleric. They run rather smoothly and typically got shorter maps. However, my Fighter tends to take longer for his damage build up and is a bit weaker do to having lower stats, yet she end up with all of the bigger ME mapss. Not only that but the rune explosion happened almost every 10-15 seconds and every enemy I killed generates a ghost. Where as my Wizard and Cleric I get rune explosion or ghost and they don't happen all that often.

Running a solo ME on Fighter is becoming an annoyance do to the longer maps, fighting more enemies and constantly needing my shield up, which slows her movement down, just so I don't get hit by a rune is making me want to kind of skip running her through ME even if I do have time to run with a group.

I'm curious if other players are experiencing something similar with Tank type classes when running a solo rune ME?

ecrana · July 2019

Completely random on my pally. I run these solo a lot on my wiz, pally, fighter and warlock and it's a crapshoot. Sometimes my tank gets the holy grail (3 short boss maps) and sometimes it's just one long map after another.

huijian · July 2019

It seems faster solo at times because of what some inexperienced players in team are doing like buggering up aggro scattering mobs or fighting every little group along the way, not taking shortcuts, knocking monsters into the gates and getting them stuck, etc...

Unknown · July 2019

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Unknown · July 2019

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benyr · July 2019

Ive run all 8 classes through sole ME a lot, to the point i have all 16 alabaster weapons. I do think its completely random on which dungeons you get, where the rune's are placed and what the rune effects are. In terms of the classes, i think of your three toons you've picked two extreme examples, i found my fighter to be quite a bit slower than my other classes, just because they have a fairly slow combat style that is AOE unfriendly. The wizard on the other hand is an AOE killing machine and coasts through the runs faster than any other class for me.
As an aside you shouldn't need need to keep your shield up to avoid runes, from the point you trigger the rune you should have adequate time to get your shield up on the fighter and paladin, or dodge on the cleric, wizard, ranger and rogue to avoid the effect. Provided i am paying attention i never have to suffer a rune effect on any of those classes anymore. The Warlock and the Barbarian don't have an immunity frame in their dodge and i've not worked out how to avoid the rune blasts on those to classes, which makes them a bit of a pain to play in ME's.

autumnwitch · July 2019

It's my understanding that the ME stages are randomly issued. Yesterday on my wizard's first run was three short stages. It took me less than 10 mins to do the whole ME run. Followed by three long ones that took nearly 30 mins. I can tell you I am so sick of twisted corridor map now.

mebengalsfan · July 2019

benyr said:
Ive run all 8 classes through sole ME a lot, to the point i have all 16 alabaster weapons. I do think its completely random on which dungeons you get, where the rune's are placed and what the rune effects are. In terms of the classes, i think of your three toons you've picked two extreme examples, i found my fighter to be quite a bit slower than my other classes, just because they have a fairly slow combat style that is AOE unfriendly. The wizard on the other hand is an AOE killing machine and coasts through the runs faster than any other class for me.
As an aside you shouldn't need need to keep your shield up to avoid runes, from the point you trigger the rune you should have adequate time to get your shield up on the fighter and paladin, or dodge on the cleric, wizard, ranger and rogue to avoid the effect. Provided i am paying attention i never have to suffer a rune effect on any of those classes anymore. The Warlock and the Barbarian don't have an immunity frame in their dodge and i've not worked out how to avoid the rune blasts on those to classes, which makes them a bit of a pain to play in ME's.

My Fighter has no issues with AoE as that is how I set her up; I forget on bosses to adjust her to be single target so the bosses tend to take longer. My Cleric is setup for both so I don't have to adjust her at all. My Wizard just melts stuff and is nearly maxed out on everything from enchantments, runestone, etc...I expect my runs on my wizard to be faster simply do to my wizard having better overall stats.

I expect my Cleric to be a bit slower than my wizard as she has better stats than my Fighter.

I expect my fighter to be slower than my cleric but not to the level I'm experiencing where every time I use my fighter solo I get the 3 biggest maps. Its frustrating to even want to run my fighter through. My cleric and wizard I can do 3 solo runs for both of them combined in under an hour. My Fighter alone can take over an hour to run her through three runs.

thefiresidecat · July 2019

it's faster to solo on hr and cw. I'm pretty good at dodging the runes and what not. but I often run them in groups anyway both for watcher chances and to help out people on support toons. my dc on the other hand is not faster. I'd say it's slower. a lot slower. he requires a group it's not built the best for dps and feels pretty weak. i always do at least one rune for the chance at artis. maps are entirely random. if anything i've had worse luck trying to solo my dc with maps than others lol.

greywynd · July 2019

Usually on my Fighter/Paladin, once a rune is tripped, I can get my shield up to take the hit. My wizard and cleric can usually dodge out. My rogue can sometimes dodge out. My barbarians take the hit. They have no choice in the matter.

finalfantasyac7 · July 2019

What i hate most about ME is when you have to do long map after another without getting any rewards from bosses due to HAMSTER neverwinter rng. The rewards you get from the quest isn't worth doing it after having the alabaster weapon.
Also if you like to challenge yourself doing ME with 3 runes solo which i did on my warlock ( very underwhelming and underperforming class compared to wizard, hunter and rogue btw) well.. the rewards are so not worth it !!

mebengalsfan · July 2019

I have to say that my Fighter must have really bad luck because every day it feels like that each ME I run has two of the longer maps if I solo my fighter. When in group I usually get the shorter maps. My wizard and cleric will get maybe one long map than two of the boss maps. It is kinda getting annoying running my fighter solo.

mordekai · August 2019

I don't tend to do group MEs, I find 1 rune is manageable even on my 17K Cleric..
But as to how long they take, apart from (obviousIy) the length of the first two sectors, I find that a lot depends on whether you get Runic ~~Sphincters~~ sorry... Spectres. It never seems to be my Rogue (who runs through 3 rune MEs with relative ease) who gets these bloody things, but always seems to be my weaker toons.
C'est la vie...

I don't have issues with the shield mechanic for avoiding Rune traps, and normal dodging is fine, but my Warlock is a different matter. I can't for the life of me Shadow Slip quickly enough to avoid them... add those damnable little red ghosts and what is generally moderate difficulty content takes an age to complete.

Did one today on my Warlock, 1 rune ME took nearly 40 minutes because of Runic Spectres and hitting about 8 bloody runes.

There is however ONE good thing I discovered about Runic Spectres the other day; if you use Horn of Valhalla like I do on a couple of my toons to get CA and take the heat off aggro-wise; if the Warrior gets killed during its 30 seconds up time, it comes back as a Runic Spectre with a green HP bar and continues to fight for you as long as his new hit points last. I keep forgetting to try summoning a second one when this happens.

thestia · August 2019

Some weeks ago on a live stream, Mr. Foss stated he was able to avoid the runes while playing barbarian. Up until then, I had been unable to reproduce the results he said he was experiencing. But, apparently it *was* possible.

I only recently got down the method to not getting a debuff when tripping a rune on Barbarian and Warlock. You don't need to shadowslip or sprint far enough away, you just need to be actively sprinting or shadowslipping when the rune explodes. In fact, most times I'm still physically right on top of the rune when it explodes, but as long as I'm shift-running I don't take the debuff and a rune bane penalty doesn't appear. Lord help you if a teammate trips a rune though. I can never react quickly enough when I'm not at ground zero.

mebengalsfan · August 2019

thestia said:
Some weeks ago on a live stream, Mr. Foss stated he was able to avoid the runes while playing barbarian. Up until then, I had been unable to reproduce the results he said he was experiencing. But, apparently it *was* possible.

I only recently got down the method to not getting a debuff when tripping a rune on Barbarian and Warlock. You don't need to shadowslip or sprint far enough away, you just need to be actively sprinting or shadowslipping when the rune explodes. In fact, most times I'm still physically right on top of the rune when it explodes, but as long as I'm shift-running I don't take the debuff and a rune bane penalty doesn't appear. Lord help you if a teammate trips a rune though. I can never react quickly enough when I'm not at ground zero.

This also applies to not only runes but all damage for the warlock and barbarian. This is why both classes suffer because players use the movement damage reduction mode to get to the enemy faster instead of what it is designed to do, which is reduce damage taken.

pitshade · August 2019

I finished getting Alabaster on everyone some time back and quit running MEs. Started back this weekend to farm more Ebonized chests. On my Warlock, was able to shadowslip and avoid the rune trap. It wasn't that hard. However, I can say with 100% certainly that it wasn't that way before. Can't remember if it was early July, but when my warlock was farming her weapons, I only managed to avoid the rune traps 1 time out of all of her runs. Not once was I able to with the Barbarian, but I haven't tested that, having just started back.

siggstar · August 2019

pitshade said:
I finished getting Alabaster on everyone some time back and quit running MEs. Started back this weekend to farm more Ebonized chests. On my Warlock, was able to shadowslip and avoid the rune trap. It wasn't that hard. However, I can say with 100% certainly that it wasn't that way before. Can't remember if it was early July, but when my warlock was farming her weapons, I only managed to avoid the rune traps 1 time out of all of her runs. Not once was I able to with the Barbarian, but I haven't tested that, having just started back.

I can confirm that you can avoid it as Blademaster Barbarian now. Also the slight "delay" I have experienced in previous content of Mod 16 seems gone. As Sentinel you can block it.

thefiresidecat · August 2019

I don't have a barbie or warlock but on other toons I can avoid the traps nearly 100% of the time. the exception is if everyone is right on you. you can't dodge if you have people next to you it seems like. it does seem like it's a barbie warlock problem though because I generally run ahead and try to clear traps even in the 1 me because it seems like I'm the only dps past 17k in most runs and it's annoying having the curse on you for these adn I'm too lazy to farm my own runes daily to do these solo on 3 toons. lol. anyhoo, it's always the barbie or the warlock who tries to keep up with me and get ahead and they invariably trigger the rune and make me go meh. I hate barbies and warlocks!!! lol. I've seen all classes trigger them regularly.. I think a lot of people don't understand you can indeed dodge them reliably and that there is a penalty for NOT dodging t hem reliably. at one point doing watcher runs when I was still bothering with that I tried to explain it to a group of people that there was a group curse that could not be cleansed if anyone triggered one. they didn't believe me. when it was triggered I pointed it out and they were like oh yeah!. I see it.

lordtweety · August 2019

My latency is too high to avoid the runes on my warlock (Aussie internet). If I see or hear the rune it's too late for me to avoid it. The only time I have managed to avoid one is because I was already shadow slipping when I triggered it and I sailed straight through. However, another warlock I run with also can't avoid them. Yet his latency is much much lower than mine. But he can avoid/block them with ease on his Pally.

I think this is wai though because the Barbie and Warlock are obviously the two most powerful classes in game and probably need to have their ability to dodge nerfed even further.

mordekai · August 2019

thestia said:
Some weeks ago on a live stream, Mr. Foss stated he was able to avoid the runes while playing barbarian. Up until then, I had been unable to reproduce the results he said he was experiencing. But, apparently it *was* possible.

I only recently got down the method to not getting a debuff when tripping a rune on Barbarian and Warlock. You don't need to shadowslip or sprint far enough away, you just need to be actively sprinting or shadowslipping when the rune explodes. In fact, most times I'm still physically right on top of the rune when it explodes, but as long as I'm shift-running I don't take the debuff and a rune bane penalty doesn't appear. Lord help you if a teammate trips a rune though. I can never react quickly enough when I'm not at ground zero.

I'm interested to know what platform you're running on.
I'd realised some time ago, with my Rogue in particular, that you can be right on top of a rune and escape its effects if you are "mid dodge". I have just never experienced this with Shadow Slip, (and God knows... I've tried...)

I'm on XBox and just ran my daily 3 MEs on my Warlock, paying attention to what you described. I hit every Rune, and whatever I did seemed to have no effect, so at the end of my third, after killing the boss, I carefully mooched round the area till I found a Rune. It appeared, primed, and I was ready... tapped the thumb-stick as fast as I will ever be capable of doing given that I was ready for it... Shadow Slip activated, my guy moved a few feet, and I was standing right next to it, in Shadow Slip pose with the violet halo and everything, and... boom... it got me.
Shields aren't an issue on either my Fighter or my Pally, but my Warlock can be in Shadow Slip BEFORE it hits the Rune and still doesn't avoid it.

thefiresidecat · August 2019

lordtweety#3604 said:
My latency is too high to avoid the runes on my warlock (Aussie internet). If I see or hear the rune it's too late for me to avoid it. The only time I have managed to avoid one is because I was already shadow slipping when I triggered it and I sailed straight through. However, another warlock I run with also can't avoid them. Yet his latency is much much lower than mine. But he can avoid/block them with ease on his Pally.

I think this is wai though because the Barbie and Warlock are obviously the two most powerful classes in game and probably need to have their ability to dodge nerfed even further.

keep trying. it's a definite skill. when you feel any kind of pause (don't look for the rune just if you feel resistance on the controller) immediately dodge/shadowslip whatever it is you have. don't dodge at any other time to keep your stamina up. if you are out of stamina from dodging too much you can't dodge. if you have a bunch of people right on top of you you can't dodge. if you have someone in your party who is insisting on running ahead. let them. either they're stupid and they'll get the curse on them or they're trying to clear traps and are pretty good at dodging. other than that keep a distance from other players who are in the lead. and don't stray off a main central path unless you have to.

it took some dedicated practice on my part. so far there isn't a toon I've ran thru that I can't dodge reliably on now. (hr tr cw and dc)

durugudesu · August 2019

thefiresidecat said:
you can't dodge if you have people next to you it seems like.

You can dodge all traps, it only becomes a bit harder because the audio cues only go to the one who triggered the trap, so if you are not watching the floor carefully, you would most likely get hit by it when it explodes.

durugudesu · August 2019

The ME rooms spawn are random. Did you try going in as dps instead of tank on your fighter? I find it easy on my fighter with all the movespeed feats available to you - You just breeze thru the map.

lordtweety · August 2019

thefiresidecat said:
so far there isn't a toon I've ran thru that I can't dodge reliably on now. (hr tr cw and dc)

Let me know when you can do it on a warlock. And as I said, by the time I get either the audio or visio clue it's too late for me to dodge.

However, this could be a bug though. I have shadow slipped as soon as I have had any clue that something was happening. I still get thrown across the middle of the rune - which is bizarre in and of itself - but I haven't been hit with a debuff. The rune bane still triggers though. So there is a possibility that it is bugged for the warlock in general. You might be able to dodge the debuff but not the rune.

I'm interested if anyone else has observed this occurring.

And yeah, letting the tank or someone that can reliably trigger and dodge the rune go first is normal.

rev · August 2019

lordtweety#3604 said:

Let me know when you can do it on a warlock. And as I said, by the time I get either the audio or visio clue it's too late for me to dodge.

Even if you are mid shadow slip you will still get cc'ed (wich isn't supposed to happen) and knocked back, this is the same problem gf and gwf also used to have (and i think they still do) with their ''immunity''.

lordtweety · August 2019

revenantpt said:

Even if you are mid shadow slip you will still get cc'ed (wich isn't supposed to happen) and knocked back, this is the same problem gf and gwf also used to have (and i think they still do) with their ''immunity''.

I've managed to avoid a couple while I was shadow slipping. But I have also been caught and thrown sideways by them.

I just let someone else go first, that way I rarely get hit.

Still, shadow slip's immunity may as well not exist. Because in game it basically doesn't.

nl54 · September 2019

I have trouble avoiding them on my barb, but sometimes I can sprint in time. Just buy a few dispelling potions and you'll be okay.

thefiresidecat · September 2019

> @nl54#3191 said:
> I have trouble avoiding them on my barb, but sometimes I can sprint in time. Just buy a few dispelling potions and you'll be okay.

You'll be OK no matter what but if you get hit with: runic specter reduced power or reduced recharge because that also spawns specter you have effectively doubled the run time

ME - Single Rune Solo Runs

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