Quote from ╔╦╗╒╕║╒╕;1164039:
In terms of exp/gold I think spamming taill II would be quicker than commercing. You can run the entire mission in about 3-4 minutes vs a commerce run that can be 2-4x that and not pay as much gold or experience. That's just my experience anyway, and I don't know if it's the most efficient mission to spam per se either. I do both though for variety.
8 minutes for a commerce run...perhaps if you get a million ambushes or are going from tara to cobh or something.
Objectively in an optimal situation, BFT2 will be faster. I don't really think there's going to be much debate about that, unless some smartass decides to factor in limited goods as "reliable" income every 2 hours or something.
However, from an optimization point of view, commerce is better from my point of view. Why? Let's take a look at some things.
First, the video that nana posted (Nice run btw):
Quote from nana;1164079:
[video=youtube;dc3iicPmS6k]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc3iicPmS6k[/video]
happy?
1) There was a lot of AoE pet spamming in that run which requires a pretty hefty NX investment - probably more then commerce would cost the average person with the g15 wears running around nowdays (You could probably even pick it up for 0 NX with a pre-reforged and some of the infinity tools laying around from the event). Some of those combos wouldn't be reliable 2KOs without the AoE pet affecting the knockdown gauge allowing for an extra Act 7 hit immediately after crisis and finishing them off without a crit rank 1 wire pull or something would probably add 1 or 2 minutes to the run just for that.
2) My browser doesn't even run that fast. Unless the average player is a lot less laggier then I think they are (and I don't really think that the lag, or lack thereof, of distinguished members of the community can really be used as evidence for the average player - I hear a LOT of bitching ingame about lagging. Constant terrible lag.) It's going to add at least another 30 seconds onto that just in clicks in stuff - nevermind rubber banding into an ice mine or skills not loading or something (Which, unless you don't intend to use that pet for the rest of your grinding, it's better to wait out).
3) Some of those hits were really lucky. Sure, you could justify that by saying a few mistakes were made, but being unable to constantly get those KOs in certain parts means you have to cover by using guns or something - which will constantly add to your times.
4) You need a rather developed character to do this already. Sure, you can get away with trash gear or even being butt naked, but you need the character stats to compensate.
Now, counterpoints:
1)G15 wear + event toolkit. Done. Don't even need NX now.
2) Commerce runs best if you avoid combat. You get such a huge warning radius with bandits that unless you're really really really laggy and you're in a speed 20 wagon or something you can always make some kind of effort in dodging.
3) You can reliably avoid bandits.
4) You don't really need as much character development for bandits as you do for BFT2 - you need more actual skill since you can't save your butt with an ice dragon, for example, but the bandits are on the whole weaker unless you run into like 10 masters in a row and in that case, you're just shit out of luck - same could be said if you tripped into 10 ice mines or got crit from a stupid long range archer detection. And it's not like you even need development to commerce - I was commercing when I was total level 10 and didn't even know how to fight.
Now, some other things regarding commerce:
Relative to BFT2, it requires little effort. I mean, i'm certainly not keeping up that kind of APM and concentration for hours at a time and I can pretty much commerce all day if I wanted to. You can do BFT2 with little concentration? Your times slip and your exp/hr goes down. You can do BFT2 with little concentration with that kind of APM? Congratulations, you're that guy that plays starcraft that has 800 APM. You don't get a medal.
There's not really much difference either. Unless you get bad luck with ambushes or start carting ogre executioner masks, there's going to be a 20% difference
tops between a fairly good commerce run and a fairly good BFT2 run. You'd certainly get more money if you actually valued and sold ducats as part of it too.
But hey, that's my take on it. If you can pump mountain dew directly into your veins to keep your apm up for hours then more power to you, but i'm certainly not going to recommend BFT2 to the average player.