Waves' 9.12 One Week Hardcore Race Build/Feedback:

Act 1 Normal:

Get freezing pulse, use it for the rest of the game (upgraded to a 12% freezing pulse somewhere down the line).

Pick up raise zombie ASAP (upgraded to a 13% raise zombie somewhere down the line)

Get phase run somewhere, don't remember where...

Skipped Fetid Pool.

Get a 13% quality Detonate Dead as a drop before prison.

Picked up clarity.

Traded for skeletons I believe, rolled brutus with them.

Breezed through to the ship graveyard, had a fright in the ship graveyard cave with like 20 flicker strike mobs, but I skeleton/freezing pulse kited them down.

Merivel, was, a, BITCH, to kill.

Minions at this point were USELESS, I also had minimal ice resist, like 40% or something. It took me 30 minutes or so to kill her, constantly going back to wrath to go find corpses for zombies, as she only 2-3 shotted them instead of insta 1 shotting skellies. 2nd form of her was easy.

Act 2 Normal:

zzzzSnorezzzz

Skipped bear/church

Oak: WTF OAK IS ON STEROIDS? I fought normal oak before he got nerfed, and let me tell you, that was a crazy fight. He must have killed a hundred skeletons and a handful of zombies over the course of the fight.

Waterfall Cave: OH GOD THE CHAOS DAMAGE WHEN CAN I GET CI?

zzzzVaal Normal Easyzzzz, seriously, Skeletons, EVEN AT 2 PER CAST, really make vaal a breeze to fight. Rocks hurt, but were manageable. I skirted the outskirts of the fight, so it took awhile, but I killed him without any real danger.

Act 1 Cruel:

I find Lesser Multiple Projectiles and then get offered a Greater Multiple projectiles from the guys on mumble for free >.>. So I attach GMP to Freezing Pulse and LMP to Ice spear on and off as sockets allowed.

Skipped Fetid Pool.

I pick up Discipline off brutus (YES!). I believe somewhere after killing brutus is where I'm given Ephemeral Edge and pick up CI.

I also find or trade for anger/wrath sometime in cruel and start leveling them (act 1 or 2 don't remember)

Act 2 Cruel:

Skipped bear/church

I "think" somewhere in act 2 cruel is where I picked up totem and super glued it to summon skeletons.

I think I also picked up Elemental weakness in this time period (eventually found and upgraded to a 6% one).

Picked up spectre but didn't really use it (like a dumbass >.<), just stuck it in a slot to lvl.

Traded for purity aura.

Act 1 Ruthless --> Act 2 Merciless:

Skipped Fetid Pool
Skipped bear/church

Nothing too major happened in this period, it was just a slow grind.

Pick up a granite flask somewhere along the way though and got a map off the first monkey rare I killed in act 2 forest merciless >.>.

I had about 3-5 maps I think by the time I killed Vaal.

I had also picked up a 4Link staff to use as my 2nd weapon set and put RMC + Purity/Discipline/Clarity on it.

I'll talk about my endgame in section 5.

Mods I refused to do:

Blood Magic for obvious reasons.

No Mana Regen because I refuse to run anything but 4 granite flasks and 1 potion. I 'might' have been able to do this mod, but I considered it too much of an inconvenience to do so I always rerolled it.

Moderately Annoying Mods:

Temporal Chains, because it slows 'me' down, but was a high quantity boost, so I did plenty of these.

50% less ES/mana regen, because it slows down my minion upkeep and side damage.

Patches of Burning Ground because it made minion upkeep annoying, especially on the 'shrine' map and thicket map where you have to retrace your steps.

Fire Resistance on maps, because it weakens minion instability, even with elemental weakness.

Any mod combination that resulted in below 30%.

Anything else was negligible, as a summoner, map mods don't really affect you much.

Important Notices:

CURSES DO NOT AFFECT YOUR MINIONS, this makes the curse rolls almost irrelevant and only a desirable quality boost.

INCREASED DAMAGE/SPEED SPEEDS UP MINION DEATHS, which means the enemies die to instability faster. These rolls are desirable as they also give decent quantity. The only thing to watch out for are goats, have a finger ready to granite for speed goat slam.

I've done plenty of vulnerability + monster damage maps, doesn't scare me at all. Although if I see "INHABITED BY GOATMEN" I sometimes consider re-rolling it. Although, goatmen leap slamming into minion with explosive results is highly amusing.

Can't really think of anything else that stood out.

First and foremost, I rarely did a map under 30% unless it had like +% magic monsters, which is THE best mod in the game except for maybe Maze on certain maps.

The map grind, was, so, PAINFUL.

I (as was mostly everyone I believe) was constantly stuck at 60-62 maps. It wasn't until near the end of the race where I/the group FINALLY started being able to barely sustain high level maps.

I had many high % quantity maps (talking 70-90+) drop 0 maps, which is INCREDIBLY frustrating. I agree and acknowledge that maps should not be a guaranteed drop, but when you burn so many mats to roll/re-roll maps and get nothing in return more often than not its just pure frustration.

I also acknowledge that while a large majority of my endgame was painful, it did have its pleasant spikes. I had 2 or so occasions where I got 5+ maps out of a single map that let me briefly do 63-66s. It wasn't until I was with the group at the final portion of my play time that we consistently did 64-67s (we had 1 68 I believe)

So, I will say this as much as I don't want to:

THE PATCH CHANGE TO MAPS WAS IN FACT A BUFF TO MAP CONSISTENCY...

...and it made it so I didn't have to stack IIQ to get maps, <3 GGG.

However the catch is you need to invest high amounts of time to realize that it was a buff to those who didn't have IIQ / a buff in general. If you are running proper quantity maps (30-40%+) You will most likely sustain maps (A.K.A never run out of all your maps) of at least 60-61s unless the RNG Gods decided that it's time for you to begin hating your life.

THE ISSUE IS PROGRESSION, when your doing 60-62 maps as a lvl 70+, its just pure and utter frustration at watching the XP bar crawl along.

It took a very long time (at least for me) to begin to sustain 61s and 62s. The next stage was also brutal, I had digressed constantly back and forth between 63s and 62s.

By the end of my race time, I had begun to sustain 63s. With enough time I believe I would be able to fully sustain high level maps.

(I'm not including group map drops in this portion, if you choose to then you could say we had begun to sustain 64 maps with a few 65+ map spikes)

THE ISSUE IS TIME, which means the issue is potentially easily solvable, tweaks to the drop rate are all I think need to be done, well... not all...

MAP DIGRESSION is perhaps the most infuriating thing in the whole grind. You finally start seeing some higher level maps, do a few, say maybe 3 63s and a 64, then you run dry and are back to 61-62s. You see 60-61 maps as drops from rare mobs in 64+. We as a group began to laugh and mock whenever we got troll map drops (a 60 map from a 66 map as an example)

Because I had to, and I mean HAD TO burn all my orbs (well, alchs, chaos, scouring, and regals anyway) to roll decent maps, I had utterly nothing to improve my gear on. I could not warrant using orbs to upgrade my gear.

ALCHS were REQUIRED to use on maps.

CHAOSES were needed to re-roll iffy/low quant rare maps, as were scourings.

REGALS were rare, used on some blue maps

I was at the utter mercy of the drop gods. But the drop gods were kind on occasion, dropping me my sexy shield and chest on a map.

I acknowledge however that this was a TIME LIMITED race, I have now way of knowing if it would have remained as such for a continued time.