ToA 900+ Guides

[Go Again]

Hey there, you might know me as Go Again L4M in game. I started off playing door until I got a Shadow drop from ToA. In the meantime I've completed about 200 900+ invocation runs over different accounts and I'm only missing the pet from my completion log. I'll be releasing guides for most common builds in the game. I'm currently setting up my door build to display the full potential (and fun) you can have in ToA as a Dinh's Bulwark spec master. However, considering when I got my Shadow I swapped my main account to a Berserker Mage, I will be releasing guides in the following order: Berserker Mage, Weapon Master Melee, and any form of Ranged build.

The most basic guide will follow. Excuse me talking uncomfortably to myself. I've only ever had to do this for university pitches, so have mercy on my soul. I will add the rest of the guides to this thread so new ToAers will have a collection of videos and sample runs, along with some commentary and tips/tricks to look back on while learning. 

Do know that it is absolutely normal to make mistakes. I've played with the best ToA runners in the game and sometimes mistakes just happen. Even on farm content, you can make a mistake that will end your run or leave one person to clean up for the rest. If you are learning this is doubly so. I hope that this encourages more people to try out solo (or even group) ToAs. Most of the knowledge and strategies in these videos are entirely transferable between solo and group content and you can make your start at any time and at any pace that you feel like. Some mechanics might feel overwhelming at first, but practice and experience will make most content second nature.

Before you watch the video, I do want to say that I am using BIS gear here. However completions with less than optimal gear are very possible. The video would have dragged on for another 15 minutes if I had to add my run with a trident/rcb and I attempted to keep these short and concise, but elaborate enough to know how to react to certain situations. Do know that Sanguinesti staff is ideal for learners as you can cover a lot of mistakes. The better gear, the more mistakes you can make and the faster your runs will naturally be. For demonstration purposes I ran a couple of my runs to simply illustrate that what might be considered challenging content for some will become easier as you get more acquainted with it.

Berserker Mage Solo 900

The following is not a method of flexing as the run was littered with mistakes. However, doing said runs is possible with the right strategies. You will have to rely heavier on your relics rather than your gear. If wanted I can upload this run separately, although I won't be including this in a guide setting.

My door build is missing just the yellow crystal from ToA, but I will add on to this thread when it is ready to do a run. Door build is just as effective (and has an insane amount of utility both solo and in group settings) compared to Berserker Mage's raw DPS output. I'll be adding on to this thread a door solo 900 and a range solo 900 when I have time to record a couple of runs on these accounts.

[Corbin Jacobs]

Thank you this is clutch

[Go Again]

As a few people have requested a guide for the door build, I've managed to throw together a character to showcase it. The only thing not mentioned in the video is that Dinh's Bulwark does NOT scale off strength bonus at all. Use the most defensively invested gear you have (even if that's Barrows gear, it will still be better than Torva), use Barrows Gloves and use a Blood Fury instead of a Torture. I see a lot of people making this mistake, such as using Bandos gear with Dinh's Bulwark, this will only negatively affect your damage throughput. I've also recently found out that Statius Warhammer is a 2-tick weapon here, as opposed to DWH being 3-tick, so technically it's better but only very slightly.

There's certain gear that you can swap from defensive gear. You can decide (and I would advise) to run Lightbearer instead of Ring of Suffering (i). You can also run Cerberus Boots to benefit your offstyles. Neither of these will put you under a certain damage threshold to not meet a near-guaranteed three-down.

This build takes some getting used to figuring out your limits. I did find it more enjoyable to play over cannoning it with a Shadow. Also, if you're totaling the cost to run this with Guardian, you will likely realise that a build that can pull similar times to the mega rare weapons Shadow/Scythe only costs you around 200m total. I have showcased runs on streams in the past where I would use tridents and mystics with a rune crossbow and still achieved 8min runs.

And to repeat, please run Guardian over any other relic unless you're severly struggling with the last phase in terms of the limited movement, then use executioner's axe. Guardian is the absolute king for this specific build.

 

[Go Again]

Minimalistic guide in terms of swaps, high gear requirement, but sub 5 min runs 🙂

[Go Again]

Figured I'd run in a more affordable setup for most people and show them decent times are easily done even with bad luck without any crazy investments

[Go Again]

With today's update these guides and invocation settings are outdated. I personally won't update these guides further.

Feel free to use clips of the videos as a template for a generic guide in the future or make a new one. 

[Go Again]

For anybody with questions regarding ToA, you will now have to run Insanity for similar runs to the ones displayed.

Regarding a previous comment about Guardian being massively helpful, this only applies if your offstyle gear is poor. If you're running Voidwaker for mage phase and a ZCB/BP/TBow for range phases you should run Undying Retribution instead, especially due to the safety net it provides with the Insanity invocation.

There's other invocation setups you can attempt to run if you are looking to play with full defence gear (Justiciar/Torva and holding Dinh's as a main damage weapon) as the range hits are far and few between where you run Overclocked 1 & Overclocked 2 and stick to mage prayer. You are likely looking to either enable food, change overly drainining or change supplies to have an extra safety net.

Bear in mind that if you run the Insanity invocation, the boss in phase 3 'remembers' the last slam location on Orbs spawning and will proceed slam this location after the Orbs are killed. Due to a fix implemented to not have orbs and slams overlap, there is a rare chance that the boss may stall, but the slam cycle invisibly continues (but won't show an animation or do damage), so you may have to react between either the logical next slam or the subsequent one appropriately. I have not found an issue with reacting to this and this seems to be a minor bug. If the boss stalls for long before throwing orbs, he might slam the location after the 'remembered' location.

ToA is now and has always been nearly impossible solo with the Berserker or Soulstealer relic (for melee and ranged), as the defence levels on the boss scale too high for you to actively do any significant damage to it. After testing I found that even two DWH/SWH specs and the use of an Osmumten's Fang were not enough to do any reasonable damage to it. As a melee player you will need somebody to DWH/SWH the boss down to acceptable defence levels.

For any further information you can always contact me in-game (Go Again L4M) for any questions. I have ran ToA before this update with all combat styles and multiple relic setups (totaling to 500-600+ 900 or above runs) and I have a lot of experience with the raid in general.

[XanFire]

Were the invocations nerfed since these videos? Specifically, the door guide? Selecting the displayed invocations only brings it up to 855.

NVM I just read the May 31st patch notes

 

Edited June 14 by XanFire