Mekuna holds the top rank in the world for Diablo 4's new challenge dungeon, The Gauntlet, but he's not done pushing for a better score.
Despite sitting firmly in rank 1 above every single Diablo 4 player in the world right now with a score of 1.1M, Mekuna is busy trying to push it to 1.2M. "I think there is always room for improvements/optimization," he told PC Gamer. "Someone could optimize their path/gear better, and anything could happen."
Blizzard released The Gauntlet yesterday and everyone is still working out the fastest way through the 8-minute dungeon. All the bosses and monsters in it are the same every run, but your character's gear and build dictate your approach. Sorcerer players, like Mekuna, are all using Teleport to blast through the dungeon quickly, but the other skills they use vary.
You can view the current gear and build players are using on the leaderboards to get an idea of what's popular. Most people in the top 10 are using variants of the lightning-based builds that Mekuna and a few others already theorized would be effective in The Gauntlet. Mekuna, however, has decided to keep his current setup a secret because he believes theorycrafting a build is part of the competition.
Mekuna says he's tried several different sorcerer builds so far—and plans to test more—but thinks you'll have the most success with one centered around the most popular lightning skills: Arc Lash, Ball Lightning, or a hybrid of the two. No other builds can compete with their attack speed and synergy when using Teleport to jump from monster to monster.
You'll also need exceptional gear, too, which Mekuna says was a bigger factor than he expected it to be. This is because the Gauntlet is full of shrine pillars that give you powerful buffs to play around. One of them causes monsters to drop more items that increase your score, which means you want to maximize your benefits from it before it runs out.
"The first thing I tested was if the pillars benefit from "shrine buff duration" [on items]," Mekuna said. "I thought it wouldn't because it would be too strong, but it did... [and] I wasn't mentally prepared for this."
He says gear with shrine buff duration, a stat that most Diablo 4 players probably ignore, is "super mandatory" because it increases the baseline 30 second buff to almost a minute with perfect rolls. Mekuna thinks this, along with needing the ultra rare Uber Unique items, will make it hard for most players to compete on the leaderboards.
"I wish they would make it harder," he says. "Like monsters having [Nightmare Dungeon] 100 four-player group HP. That would make more sense to me since we are farming Uber Uniques, min-maxing gear. It's a bit sad to kill everything so easily, but [that's] from a competitive point-of-view, casuals might prefer the actual Gauntlet."
Outside of the leaderboard chase, you can attempt The Gauntlet for item cache rewards when the dungeon resets the next week. The scores Blizzard set don't seem to be that hard to clear, so most players should be able to earn those as long as they're close to level 100. But if you want a place on the leaderboards, you'll have to start doing the work.
"Get shrine buff duration on [your] gear and test many routes, you never know if the one you are using is the best," Mekuna says for anyone hoping to compete. "[You] also gotta analyze your run but I can't give that advice because I don't even do it myself but some streamers do."
He says he's spent around four to six hours grinding The Gauntlet and plans to stream co-op runs on his Twitch channel soon. And next week, when the leaderboards reset and the layout of The Gauntlet changes, he'll be there to do it all again.
"I just like to always improve and push [things] to the limits I guess," he said.
