Herald Spawn Q (Meh aspect of it)

I'll quote the reddit thread

Now comes the tricky part. Look at the Graph again. You can see there is already some chance for

Herald Tier 5 to spawn per monster kill at 30% zone completion. But, Tier 5

Herald can’t spawn before Tier 4

Herald spawns, which is 0% chance to spawn at 30% zone completion. We first must first wait for Tier 1 to spawn before we look at any other. And each Tier has different probabilities to spawn. In addition to that, when the

Herald Tier spawns, your zone completion percentage is reset to 0. Or better said, your kill count is reset to 0.

So I've noticed that when I play with my friend, he's constantly spawning heralds while I rarely get them.

We usually split it so I do act 1 and he does act 2. He is a bloodboil Warlock and I'm a Blizz sorc.

His kill speed is very high. He teleports through everything and it melts. It feels like he'll spawn a

Herald around the time I feel one should spawn for me and then I end up not getting a

Herald in that area, especially if he managed to get 2 before I finished an area.

I've suspected that him spawning a

Herald has a negative influence on me. After reading the above I'm wondering if him spawning a

Herald sets my area back to 0% completion or not.

It does not. Completion is by area. Otherwise you'd never see back to back (to back to back...) spawns within seconds in pug TZ games which you see all the time.

You simply need to a) clear enough of your area to start having a chance and then b) kill more stuff and get lucky with the proc. Since blizz is severely cast-delay-capped though, yeah, your buddy should be significantly faster at clearing (and hence

Herald proccing) than you.

Additionally, some areas are far more spawn-friendly than others, simply due to the spawn area size (take a closer look at that section of the post you quoted). Tombs for example benefit your friend massively in A2 while catacombs in A1 are kind of a pain.

The back to back part makes sense. I do get that from time to time and yeah it wouldn't be possible if it reset to 0%.

I'm probably just having streaks of bad luck and giving up a little too soon on an area.

Crimmy wrote: 1 day ago

[..] and giving up a little too soon on an area.

If you actively give up on an area before properly clearing it then you're just actively sabotaging your

Herald chances. As soon as you leave the area behind and go to the next one, that next area is at 0 because you haven't cleared anything there. So your chances equally drop back down to 0 until you clear enough of it. If you then give up again before clearing properly, you just keep resetting your

Herald chance to 0 over and over while leaving only very limited windows for a possible spawn in between.

There is one very important thing to notice - if you leave the area (taking a TP or just "activating" a new area by crossing over) - a reset is done.

Tombs are by far the most efficient area and also the fastest way to make heralds spawn since each tomb is its own area. I had 3 heralds spawn in the same tomb.

So porting back to town to repair a weapon is counted as 'giving up' on the area?

it also depends what is your run sequence. if you start in catacombs, you will likely get 0 Heralds from it, because it needs full clear of the entire lvl1-5 to give you a

Herald lvl1. but if you start in

Den of Evil, you are almost guaranteed thee first

Herald.
same mechanics are explained in thread

enderlr wrote: 1 day ago

So porting back to town to repair a weapon is counted as 'giving up' on the area?

I'd like to know about this as well.

I didn't see that hinted at, but I do go to town often when my cube is full from gems etc. I use a

Sling ring so I'm abusing portals atm

If true/correct (I'm assuming it is) it's probably why I made this topic as well.

As Schnorki pointed out, its clear that a double

Herald spawn in two different areas implies that heralds don't reset completion percentages in other areas.

But I do feel like I observe way less heralds than I should sometimes and I do TP a lot with my

Sling ring. Way more now that I realized console let's you put things directly into your cube. So my inventory space is tiny and I'm constantly picking up stuff.

Edit:

So it lists "All temple levels" for Act 3.

Is this saying each temple level is its own? Or they're all tied together?

The image Pav provided lists a lot of areas individually, such as each tomb. So I'm assuming each act 3 temple is not its own individual area otherwise he'd have listed them individually.

But if leaving an area resets it, how would that make sense if all the temples are linked together?

Here is my bliz sorc taking 10 min on a T5

Herald. I think the Warlock just kills so much faster it just feels like something is off.

retepnap wrote: 1 day ago

There is one very important thing to notice - if you leave the area (taking a TP or just "activating" a new area by crossing over) - a reset is done.

Tombs are by far the most efficient area and also the fastest way to make heralds spawn since each tomb is its own area. I had 3 heralds spawn in the same tomb.

How do you know this / what is the source? Or is it just a speculation?

Should be relatively easy to test. Just do a couple a few large zones tping roughly 1/3 and 2/3 of the way through each zone, and see if that stops

Herald's from spawning.

A totally non scientific/anecdotal reference would support the theory that using a TP resets your active zone progress count to 0.

I did 10 or so A1 full clears over the weekend to burn up some of my backlog of shards and I found almost perfect overlap between the zones that I TP'd to clear inventory space and the zones that didn't spawn a T5

Herald when I was anticipating one.

It became so notable that after about 4 or 5 'empty' zones across a couple of games, I changed my looting strategy and started eating a time penalty by TPing back to town after every zone or two was 100% cleared before I moved into the next one.

On average I was seeing 2~3 more T5 Heralds per A1 clear after I stopped TPing mid zone.



It is 100% anecdotal, and its not even a large enough sample size to give a distribution to allow for statistical leveling, but until I'm online and bored and one of the larger zones gets naturally Terrorized so I can try some 1/3 clears -> TP then reload to validate I don't see any real negative cost (other than a minimal time cost) to avoiding TPs mid run.

Morrlain wrote: 9 hours ago

A totally non scientific/anecdotal reference would support the theory that using a TP resets your active zone progress count to 0.

I did 10 or so A1 full clears over the weekend to burn up some of my backlog of shards and I found almost perfect overlap between the zones that I TP'd to clear inventory space and the zones that didn't spawn a T5

Herald when I was anticipating one.

It became so notable that after about 4 or 5 'empty' zones across a couple of games, I changed my looting strategy and started eating a time penalty by TPing back to town after every zone or two was 100% cleared before I moved into the next one.

On average I was seeing 2~3 more T5 Heralds per A1 clear after I stopped TPing mid zone.



It is 100% anecdotal, and its not even a large enough sample size to give a distribution to allow for statistical leveling, but until I'm online and bored and one of the larger zones gets naturally Terrorized so I can try some 1/3 clears -> TP then reload to validate I don't see any real negative cost (other than a minimal time cost) to avoiding TPs mid run.

I gave my warlock friend my

Sling ring and asked him to

Teleport often while clearing Tals and he still got a

Herald in almost all the tombs, sometimes right after a re entering a TP if I remember correctly. We can try again later.

I just ran a

Cold Plains and Cave level getting one

Herald up in

Cold Plains, no

Teleport out of

Cold Plains. I also got one

Herald in the cave, but that one popped up after killing 4 skeletons right after returning from porting to town to repair my weapon. So it seems, the reset to 0 comment may not hold a lot of water.

KillingestGOLDENAK47 wrote: 15 hours ago

Here is my bliz sorc taking 10 min on a T5

Herald.
bilzsorcstrug.jpg
I think the Warlock just kills so much faster it just feels like something is off.

What's your cold penetration at?

Some heralds do still spawn quite tanky. And the one you're looking at there is not only cold enchanted but a mob type that happens to be cold immune by default. Keep in mind that

Cold Mastery does get a 1/5th penalty vs. immunes these days as well.

Plus you are using blizzard which has always (and still does) kinda sucked when it comes to hit registration. Odds are you've got quite a few misses in there when you just cast it on him.

retepnap wrote: 1 day ago

There is one very important thing to notice - if you leave the area (taking a TP or just "activating" a new area by crossing over) - a reset is done.
[..]

Sorry but that is simply incorrect.

Easy enough to test:
1) Make a new game
2) Keep it a solo game for ease of testing/certainty
3) Go to TZ
4) Kill some stuff (not enough to trigger a

Herald but enough to get close)
5) TP to town
6) Come back
7) Kill one more mob/small pack
8.1) Repeat steps 5-7 until you get a

Herald spawn
8.2) If you don't get a

Herald by the time the TZ is cleared, go back to step 1

If TPing caused a reset, you would never - ever - see a

Herald spawn in the above approach as the 1 mob/pack after coming back would always follow a reset and would never be enough to push you past the T1

Herald mark by itself. And yet, if you do actually run that test (which yes, I just did - twice, to be sure), you will eventually get a

Herald spawn off the first kill after coming back from town. TPing hence cannot trigger a reset or that

Herald would've never happened.

You are hence free to TP and stash your loot as often as you want to, without losing

Herald progression for doing so.
Anecdotally, I already knew that was the case and the reset claim was untrue but for the sake of this post, I did go ahead and specifically test it, just to be certain.