Hall of Grandmasters

Hall of Grandmasters is a unique.

Layout
Instead of containing randomly spawned monsters as in most other maps, the Hall of Grandmasters includes other exiles based on characters of players who purchased a Grandmaster supporter pack.

The map consists of a foyer with several large doorways. Between each door is a hall of 50 grandmasters, separated by forcefields so you fight waves of 5 at a time. Currently there are 4 halls (Hall of the Heroes, Hall of the Eternal, Hall of the Fallen, and Hall of the Twisted), making 200 Grandmasters or 40 waves in the map. The waves are randomly organised by approximate difficulty and get progressively harder.

At the end of each hall there is a unique Strongbox called Grandmaster's Cache that does not spawn monsters when opened.

According to the development plan, "Grandmasters using Vaal Skills will gain one Vaal Soul per skill every five seconds. It's currently possible to encounter Tormented Spirits in the map. You will not encounter Strongboxes (other than those at the end of each hall) or Rogue Exiles." However currently Grandmasters generate 2 Vaal souls every second.

See here for a list of Grandmasters.

Strategy
Some of the Grandmasters have combinations of legacy gear and very heavy defences, making them hard to kill for a lot of builds. In general these can be categorized by high recovery (life regen, ES regen), high avoidance mechanics (Block, Dodge, Evasion), high damage reduction (reduced elemental damage taken, reduced physical damage taken) and Immunities (Chaos Innoculation, Gluttony of Elements, legacy Immortal Call).

Dealing with avoidance mechanics: is a must for hit based builds. If you cannot replace one of your links then you can link a fast hitting attack/spell with it to quickly reduce Grandmasters defences. A suggestion is | Holy Flame Totem - Multiple Totems - Faster Casting - Block Chance Reduction | which will reduce Grandmasters block chance to zero in about a second.

Dealing with recovery: Frost Bomb solves most recovery problems and is currently the easiest way to deal with this.

Dealing with damage reduction: Some Grandmasters have very high physical reduction, if you struggle with this consider converting some of your damage to elemental. As with players, reducing (not recommended due to overcapped resistances) and penetrations is a massive increase to the damage taken.

Dealing with Immunities: Chaos skills is NOT RECOMMENDED as there are several characters with Chaos Innoculation which makes completion impossible. All other forms of immunities, including legacy Immortal Call is time based or can be solved by converting damage or dealing a mix of elemental and physical damage.

(!)Minions: Due to the way PvP damage scaling works, minions such as Spectres and Animate Guardian are extremely vulnerable in this map. They can be instantly killed by some grandmasters even with 50000+ Life and multiple defensive links such as Minion Life Support, Meat Shield Support, and Elemental Army support. It is heavily recommended to deactivate your Animate Guardian so you do not lose any expensive items equipped to it.

Hall of Grandmasters has legacy variants due to the base map came from different map series. Note that there is a vendor recipe to convert map to the current series. The above table only listing the first 4 legacy variants. The legacy variants introduced since 3.5 and the variable tier versions since 3.9 are omitted.



Version history

 * The Hall of Grandmasters unique map has been removed from the Atlas. It still can still drop as loot, it just does not need to be completed to complete your Atlas.


 * Added a new mechanic - Watchstones: These can only be obtained by defeating one of the new Atlas bosses. They can be used to raise the tier of all maps in a particular region of the Atlas, causing all maps of those base types to drop at the new higher tier.
 * Unique maps can now drop with varied tiers based on the state of your Atlas.


 * Grandmasters in the Hall of Grandmasters now generate 2 Vaal Souls per second, up from 1 soul per 5 seconds.


 * The Hall of Grandmasters unique map now only has four wings. The quantity of Grandmasters in this map was causing us technical problems. We have had to reduce the number of wings so that the map can be opened.


 * Updated the Hall of Grandmasters with about a dozen additional Grandmasters and some replacements.
 * Fixed a bug where some Grandmasters did not use correctly.


 * Added a few more Grandmasters to the Hall of Grandmasters and replaced some that had been resubmitted. Changes to chaos damage conversion do not affect already submitted Grandmasters, even though it is retroactive in other cases.
 * Fixed bugs related to Grandmasters using properly.


 * Now has nine potential wings. Only six wings will be available each time the map is used.


 * Fixed an instance crash with various Grandmasters in the Hall of Grandmasters end-game unique Map.


 * Added a sixth wing to The Hall of Grandmasters.


 * All of the halls which were removed from The Hall of Grandmasters in The Awakening have been reinstated and an additional two halls have been added.


 * Many maps have changed where they fit in the map progression. There are more maps at higher tiers than before.
 * As the sweeping balance changes have had an impact on existing Grandmasters, The Hall of Grandmasters map will only have one wing as we check and modify the state of each grandmaster where needed.


 * Increased the item level of the items dropped by most of the chests in the Hall of Grandmasters by two levels. This brings the Strongboxes in-line with the drops of the masters themselves (level 71).


 * Added to the game.
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