Build benchmarks on HC

So, browsing around this forum a bit in the last days I’ve seen that people frequently talk about the capacity of doing SR 75 or above as a way of assessing what would be considered a “good” build. Or sometimes Crucible 150-170 under a certain amount of time.

However, as far as I can tell, that’s usually said in the context of SC gameplay. So that got me wondering about what would be the benchmarks for HC. What do people consider to be the goals that should be achieved for a build to be considered good in HC? Are those the same as on SC, or would they be different?

I know that this is personal and that people might have different goals - my own goals are certainly way less impressive than those of more experienced players. I’m just curious about what other people think.

If it can reach&farm SR65 in the long run it’s a good build for HC specifically, and if it can farm SR75 on same terms it’s amazing. Not sure why you say builds are measured by SR75 on SC, being able to clear it even with a dozen of deaths is something any reasonably built character should be able to do, even if it’s a bit memey in concept. For SC builds are proven by being able to clear SR85+.
Same for the Crucible, SC builds push the timer and it isn’t that impressive if it’s not below 5 minutes, but for HC if it can reliably farm in 6-7 minutes in 3+1 or 4+3 setup it’s already good enough I think.

Basically, SC pushes peak performance so it’s an easy benchmark, while HC has to confirm reliability while maintaining reasonable performance, which isn’t easy to quantify because two builds that can reliably do SR65+ will be similarly strong in that benchmark, while if it was SC benchmarks there might had been quite a difference.

EDIT: this is ofcourse just my personal vision

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Hardcore is its own mode, right? The top priority will always be “not die”, meaning reliability. I’d say a good Hardcore build is the same a good Softcore build is, it’s good if you’re satisfied with its performance. There are numerous benchmarks in GD, but while some have emerged from some kind of community consensus in Softcore, you’re always free to set your own goals. You could try asking some proheminent HC players, like Rektbyprotoss.

One thing I think is quite different between HC and SC is that the most important part in HC is actually the journey, while for SC players that stick to endgame, you put Lokarr set, drink potions of Clarity, or straight GDstash characters, and test them at level 100, or SR 65, or other endgame metrics. That’s why I suspect there isn’t as much of a consensus about what makes a good Hardcore character. I guess you could make a point about having a build that can efficiently farm for other characters, so…being able to clear reliably all Rogue dungeons and all Nemesis in Ultimate, killing Celestials like Ravager or Mogdrogen in Elite, maybe Celestials that are specific to Ultimate, aka Lokarr and the Clones (Crate of Entertainment excluded since it has no useful drops, just prestige ones), and farming SR 60-61 in Ultimate, in short, being able to get every single useful piece of gear in the game, something like that?

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Sorry for off-topic, but may I ask a question? There are these requirements for SR in Build Compendium (for SoftCore):

  • (sr-) - can complete Shattered Realm up to Shard 50 on Ultimate difficulty;
  • (sr) – can complete Shattered Realm up to Shard 65 on Ultimate difficulty;
  • (sr+) - can complete Shattered Realm up to Shard 75 on Ultimate difficulty.

Will there be any changes since build power increase (mostly)? For example, like this:

  • (sr-) - can complete Shattered Realm up to Shard 75 on Ultimate difficulty;
  • (sr) – can complete Shattered Realm up to Shard 85 on Ultimate difficulty;
  • (sr+) - can complete Shattered Realm up to Shard (95-100?) on Ultimate difficulty.

As I can see, most builders do not concider SR 75 a significant accomplishment and test builds from 80+ Shards. About HC and Crucible I cannot say much since I have zero experience in first and little in second :slightly_smiling_face:.

I actually planned to reform it by removing (sr-) entirely and leaving only (sr) for builds that can do anything from SR50 to SR75 (which is more or less the optimal farming range), and raise the (sr+) to SR85+.

The reason I didn’t is Duchy started doing SR80 builds and I don’t want to piss him off an extra time. Also because I wasn’t sure about how new SR arenas showcased back in May would affect the benchmarks, so I decided to wait for their release at least.

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Yes, he has so many posted builds to test again :sweat_smile:.

Understandable :slightly_smiling_face:. Thank you for the answer.

But what would be called builds for SR 76 to SR 84 in that case? (sr±)? (sr-+)(sr Duchy-style)? :sweat_smile:

It would still fall in (sr) range if that was the case. Most people I consulted with claim that SR80 isn’t that different from SR75.

I see. There is a notable gap between SR 50 and SR 65 though, you begin to see the really annoying Nemesis like Grava’Thul appear around SR60, or is it just anecdotal observation from my part?

On the other hand there are some really small arenas in SR50-SR60 range that don’t appear higher up…

EDIT: tbh I’m not sure about SR50 myself. It’s mostly a backwards compatibility for builds currently tagged (sr-), as well as to allow some of the lower end HC builds to get the (sr) tag without doing the split (benchmarking Protoss in that regard).

SR 50 is needed for completing the last SR quest, I think that’s why it’s part of the conversation regarding SR performance. Like, if your build can’t complete SR 50, you’ll be forever stuck with that annoying “Complete SR 50 blablabla”, and you won’t get the last attribute point available. ^^ That being said, you could argue there is a difference between just completing SR50 once and farming SR50-51 reliably. I think it would still be nice to get a (sr-) tag for farming SR50-51 reliably, would incentive less experienced builders to share their builds, I know I’m intimidated by all these (sr) and (sr+) tags out there.

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That was just my impression from reading the forum. Having the SR+ mark on the build compendium be at SR75 was one me think this was the goal, but I see from the discussion here that this might not be the case.

What’s a 3+1 or 4+3 setup? I imagine it has to do with the buffs you can get in Crucible.

Yeah, I do have my own goals. I’ve been able to farm Lokarr’s set with one build and that made me quite happy. My second build is clearing Crucible 100-150 reliably (with the extra life buff) and that’s good for me as well. Still want to try Crucible 150-170, but slightly scared of losing the char I’m still enjoying a lot (actually, after writing this I decided to YOLO it and ran 150-170; took me 12 mins but I survived it, so pretty happy).

The point of the question was really just to hear what other players, specially the more experienced ones, consider their benchmarks. Out of curiosity, cause I know it would certainly be vastly different from my own goals as a newbie.

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Congrats for beating Cruci 170! I never tried it, Cruci 100-150 is what I enjoy, might have to try one day…

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Thanks :smiley:

Did it a second time now, almost died on last wave. I think doing 100-150 is much more reasonable for my current build. 150-170 will kill me eventually. And I also end up spending more tributes in buffs than I get back, so it’s not sustainable in the long run. 100-150 is the way to go for now.

They are essentially outdated. Thresholds were chosen by the previous keeper of the compendium based on his own experience back then. Things changed, e.g. camera abuse was unknown at the time and there were no 80+ waystones so only truly mad people climbed that high. One did climb to around 107 with Infiltrator without turning his PC off in something like 20 hours IIRC.

3+1 is three buffs and one tier 3 offense banner, 4+3 is four buffs and three tier 1 storm beacons. Standard benchmarks.

I would put crucible gladiator 150 under minimum benchmarks aswell, but I don’t play crucible that much.

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Basically this^ except for SR benchmarks, SC SR is a joke as you can just reenter the bossfight after dying, which is why imo the “sr” tag should be given for SR50 on HC and “sr+” for 65.

That’s the kind of benchmark I was curious about.

I also imagined the Crucible marks would be the same as for a SC build (since afaik you have to survive the whole Crucible round on SC as well?). But I did read people talking about builds that could reach a certain SR level “just dying occasionally”, which is obviously not something that works on HC. So I imagined that SR marks would be somewhat different.

One other question: I took a random look at some of your builds and they all seem to use 1-3 MI items with double rare affixes. From my (limited) experience getting a triple rare item of the right base and with actually useful affixes seems pretty much impossible. So, are those items just GDStash creations or can you realistically get them by playing the game? And in case it’s the former, would that change where you’d set the bar for builds if they didn’t have GDStash items?