Klei confirmation needed: Glitch or pure ingenuity?

[TheFacelessMane]

I'm referring to the team with the fastest win yesterday. Look at this lineup

2 Maxwells and 1 Wicker, fetching 10:50. I notice that the two Maxwells have the same name, which makes me wonder if it's a glitch in displaying the record. Can any of the devs be kind enough to confirm if this is a glitch or if 3 book-characters actually got that record yesterday? Because if the latter is true, consider my mind a little blown

[Daniel86268]

Three book characters like this aren't a bad combo though. Wicker heals, one max can constantly run around and petrify with three books, swapping around, enabling everyone else to constantly focus their damage on one enemy, and the other max is using the fire staff. No time wasted on dodging by the other 5 characters.

Not sure about the names though. Maybe those are two people with the same steam name, or it's a glitch that either the same account was able to play twice at the same time, or it just shows it playing twice on the records page.

[TheFacelessMane]

1 hour ago, Daniel86268 said:

Three book characters like this aren't a bad combo though. Wicker heals, one max can constantly run around and petrify with three books, swapping around, enabling everyone else to constantly focus their damage on one enemy.

I think you may be missing the point. Speed runs are about using any strategy that facilitates team dps being maximized throughout the game. This means using AOE spells on as many mobs as possible, yet doing it safely, and time-efficiently, etc. So you can see how a strategy like focusing on one enemy would be very counter productive. I can assure you that the reason they got that time with 3 bookers has absolutely nothing to do with isolating and killing one target at a time.

I've been following speed run times/lineups since Beta and to my recollection three book characters (bookers) have never been used to get a win under ~14 minutes, let alone 10:50. The reason that time with that lineup is incredibly impressive is because a third booker comes at the cost of a potential ranged darter, that could have been multishotting (approximately 1.7 times more dps from one source). Now, 13 minutes with 3 bookers is probably doable right now by any team that's done many speedrun games together and have that rhythm going. But the quicker that time gets, the more the lack of damage from not having a multishotter will start to show, unless there is another strategy to compensate for it.

Anyway, I personally hope the duplicate names aren't a glitch and actually a possible new innovation, like when the woodie fissure-dodge strategy was introduced. 

[JohnWatson]

maybe they're good at the game