Shadowers in Horntail - Where do they stand? (Project Snoop Dogg)

Alright, so I kind of lied with the title. This isn't an examination of how good Shadowers are in Horntail... at least, not really. I just wanted to make a cheeky reference to Project Pippy.

So if we're not taking a look at Shadowers place in the Horntail meta, what is this, exactly?

It's an exploration. An adventure. A journey of friendship, weenie wagging, and, above all else, an exercise in fuckery and tomfoolery.

Our tale starts and ends in the same place: greed. I am a very greedy boi. I want it all. I like making things that make me rich. As such, this journey begins with a min-maxed 5-man Horntail squad, of which you can find more information in this journal. I wanted to make a 5-man squad because I wanted to get "free" exp on my Bucc, and also lowkey to flex a little that we could clear 5-man faster than most squads could clear 6-man. Any sweaty squad needs talented players, so I recruited (conscripted, even) two of my good friends Glaceon and Gurk , who I have come to realize are utterly irreplaceable and easily two of the most valuable runners you can have on a Horntail squad.

While running 5-man, we utilized the Sed mule's smoke during Legs, as many squads do, often combined with a TL to extend the duration. As anyone who has experienced this before can attest, the Smoke during legs feels positively orgasmic. Eventually someone (probably Gurk) asked the question "what if we had another Smoke during Legs/Tail?" and brought his Shadower for a second Smoke, both of which were TLed now for a total of four Smokes. Then the question was asked "what if we kept smoking during the rest of body when Smoke came up?" followed by "what if we had three Shadowers?" quickly followed again by "what if we had four Shadowers?"

You can see where I'm going with this.

Enter Project Snoop Dogg. One part DPM padding one part bullshit and a healthy dose of fun. After hitting 10m HT DPM earlier in the year while duo attacking on some borrowed gear, I never really seriously considered being able to hit 10m on my own gear by the end of the year, but I did know if it was going to happen, it would need some seriously contrived shit going on, to the point where it would basically be illegitimate.

Like I care if it's legit. It's all weenie wagging, anyways.

So, I decided to put together a theoretical 6-man squad of as much Smoke muling as possible. Since my own Shadower wasn't quite ready yet, it meant the remaining 5 members would need to have 6 Smokes between them, 7 for 100% coverage, as Smoke lasts 45 seconds and has a 5 minute cooldown, although I was willing to accept 6 since there would be a delay between smokes so 100% coverage was impossible anyways. The requirements for the squad were two-fold:
1. They needed access to at least one Smokescreen
2. They needed big dick DPM, ideally at least 8m but higher if possible. Arms needed to die in a single Shield for optimal DPM, which requires a total DPM across the squad of at least 50m, ideally closer to 55m.

Since the pool of players that meet these requirements is insanely small, I figured it was a longshot to begin with, but I reached out to some of my good friends on the server including Gurk, Peter, imTinii , Soblet and TheIegend27 all of whom I would consider overall probably the best or one of the best players for their respective classes and all of whom either are Smoke, or can mule Smoke, with Gurk being insane enough to pilot three Smoke mules. A couple of these players besides myself had also been chasing DPM benchmarks that felt tantalizingly close but remained just out of reach, including Tini also chasing the elusive 10m and Gurk aiming for 13m so he could finally replace beegoratto as his PR Bishop.

The squad also coincidentally consisted of 6 unique classes for active attackers. We love diversity.

I decided from the beginning this would be a one-off and not a regular run, since a) we're all 200 and this is a colossal waste of EXP and b) I figured it'd be a lot of effort and too stressful for a regular run. A day and time was picked, a tentative order and some minor strategy notes were written down, and we were off to the races.

The entire VOD for the run can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoMRMdUGsHU

The cancels for run 1 were actually quite good, but due to a mental lapse I called for a DPM that was ludicrously short, fucking over some of the DPM tests since they couldn't get extra time attacking Arms that would normally help bring the DPM up a bit at the end. My own personal play was a bit rusty as it's been a while since I've run single client BM and it was difficult to weave in Arrow Rain and watch head ducks while also keeping timers, but I did manage to meet my goal for the run. I came into this run with a Horntail Buff that I had saved from the previous night's run and the run time was short enough that I had it for the entire DPM test as the squad's overall DPM was excellent and we cleared in under 1 hour.
MW30/Echo/HT Buff



The information from this run meant we could correct the DPM time for run 2, but the cancels didn't line up well and a couple of small fuck ups happened with the smoke mules mid run that pretty much cooked most of the runners.

Regardless, at least two of us had managed to meet our goals for the run (myself and Tini) and, while I can't speak for the rest of the runners, I had a great time and it was pretty fun watching such a convoluted strategy play out like this. I always enjoy running with everyone on this squad and this run was no different.

Shoutout again to Gurk, Peter, Tini, Jack and Soblet for coming through and putting up with my stupid ideas, you guys are all goats.

Anyways, after the run I went and did something I haven't done in a while: a dummy DPM test. With the exact same range as the above screenshot, I did a dummy DPM test and got just shy of 13m.

This puts my DPM efficiency for the run at just over 78%, slightly higher if you assume 10.07 would have been higher due to arms at the end, or about 3 percentage points higher than theoretical "ideal" BM play, and 5 percentage points higher than what I usually get when I run. This would also put a non-smoke muled DPM at around 9.5m, which is honestly slightly lower than I would have estimated I'm capable of right now.

So what are the conclusions for this run? Is this going to affect the meta at all?

My personal take is, most likely, no. Smoke muling like this requires access to, well, Shadower mules, something the typical player doesn't have, and even if they do have one it's kind of an involved process swapping them into the party. It worked for this run as everyone was 200 and we could keep the Bishop out of party the entire run since nobody needed HS, but realistically most squads won't be able to do this, and even if they could it's a lot of effort. A 5-man run consisting of only single-client attackers with an open slot in party could consider it, but none of those even exist right now.

Runs like these will likely only exist in the context of for-fun meme runs and pushing DPM ceilings.

Anyways, I did manage to meet my goal of hitting 10m HT DPM before the end of the year without resorting to borrowing gear, which is nice, and something I didn't think possible previously even under extreme circumstances such as this. How legitimate the DPM test actually is is still pretty questionable, but it's fine. 10m DPM for a Bowmaster without these kind of shenanigans is a long-term goal anyways, and maybe we can revisit this again in a couple years.

I enjoyed these runs a ton, and if you watch the VOD I hope you enjoy them as well, otherwise I hope you enjoyed the read.

I'll let my squad mates post their own experiences/results in the comments if they like.

 

I think Soblet performed admirably and the presence of an in-party Shad helps lower avoid classes (notably Sair) help set up their own Smoke.