Edit: Cinderswallow is also a good option, as stated above. I don't think it's necessary if you've invested enough in mana recovery, but it's a really powerful item if you find yourself consistently under 40% of your max mana when mapping. Also, I would never use it for big boss fights.
I use Bottled Faith on Sirus+ bosses but for general use, including Simulacrum, I have been using Cinderswallow and really liking it. Beyond the standard benefits the movement speed and stun reduction are great. Really, it's the stun reduction that makes it essential in Simulacrum and delirious maps because you just can't instantly clear the mobs even with Bottle Faith and getting chain stunned is what kills you from my experience, or getting 1 shot by one of the delirium bosses jumping on you but that doesn't seem preventable with this build.
Edit: Cinderswallow is also a good option, as stated above. I don't think it's necessary if you've invested enough in mana recovery, but it's a really powerful item if you find yourself consistently under 40% of your max mana when mapping. Also, I would never use it for big boss fights.
I use Bottled Faith on Sirus+ bosses but for general use, including Simulacrum, I have been using Cinderswallow and really liking it. Beyond the standard benefits the movement speed and stun reduction are great. Really, it's the stun reduction that makes it essential in Simulacrum and delirious maps because you just can't instantly clear the mobs even with Bottle Faith and getting chain stunned is what kills you from my experience, or getting 1 shot by one of the delirium bosses jumping on you but that doesn't seem preventable with this build.
No question, there are a ton of fringe benefits and it's an amazing item. I just personally don't find it that useful because my mana recovery is super strong without it and I've got Onslaught via Omeyocan. I would probably be using it if I didn't have Onslaught from another source, since it's such a powerful buff for this build. Now that you mention it, I could definitely see myself using it for Delirium content and in maps with decreased life/mana recovery...
About stun immunity, I would be nervous relying on a flask for that. Are you not running Brine King? Skyforth is also an even better option there. Then again, it's not like there's a better unveiled option we could choose than that one.
Edit: Cinderswallow is also a good option, as stated above. I don't think it's necessary if you've invested enough in mana recovery, but it's a really powerful item if you find yourself consistently under 40% of your max mana when mapping. Also, I would never use it for big boss fights.
I use Bottled Faith on Sirus+ bosses but for general use, including Simulacrum, I have been using Cinderswallow and really liking it. Beyond the standard benefits the movement speed and stun reduction are great. Really, it's the stun reduction that makes it essential in Simulacrum and delirious maps because you just can't instantly clear the mobs even with Bottle Faith and getting chain stunned is what kills you from my experience, or getting 1 shot by one of the delirium bosses jumping on you but that doesn't seem preventable with this build.
No question, there are a ton of fringe benefits and it's an amazing item. I just personally don't find it that useful because my mana recovery is super strong without it and I've got Onslaught via Omeyocan. I would probably be using it if I didn't have Onslaught from another source, since it's such a powerful buff for this build. Now that you mention it, I could definitely see myself using it for Delirium content and in maps with decreased life/mana recovery...
About stun immunity, I would be nervous relying on a flask for that. Are you not running Brine King? Skyforth is also an even better option there. Then again, it's not like there's a better unveiled option we could choose than that one.
I am running Brine King but I think I was still getting stunned a lot, perhaps that isn't correct, so much is happening at once that it is often hard to tell what the hell just happened with deaths coming essentially instantly. Unfortunately I am fairly limited on boots because I need a lot of resistance and dex on them. I am hoping that next league we will get some more deterministic crafting so resistance capping is a bit easier when using a lot of unique items. If I knew the game as well in Harvest as I do now I don't think it would be much trouble to get the gear to the point where it could do 100% delirious maps with ease. Once I get my level 6 spell echo I think I will try to do some crafting to see if I can figure that out a bit more.
For people who are able to beat Sirus A8, what is your FPS when you press key "F1" in hideout vs. in Sirus battle?
I just failed another A8 run recently, mainly due to two reasons:
* there is significant lagging, I often walk out of safety zone causing more Deatomization Storm, or just walk into deadly zones.
* the visualization of Meteor Maze always fail to render on my machine, and I had to rely on exit flares which are not easy to find route, sometimes easy to walk out of satety zone as well.
In the end there are too many Storms in the battle ground, I was not able to find good place to hide during phases.
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Playing on my laptop with my old man's NVS 5200M graphic card. Not good setup, but I still want to try my best.
I made a video recording as well, hope I can figure out a youtube link soon.
Last edited by billybob630#2960 on Dec 18, 2020, 2:53:58 PM
For people who are able to beat Sirus A8, what is your FPS when you press key "F1" in hideout vs. in Sirus battle?
I'm playing on my potato Mac, and my frame rate drops from 40 during normal play to about 20. It's definitely an issue, but I think I also don't have the mechanics of the "Die" beam down. I also play with super blurry graphics, so I think it's harder to find the real Sirus. I just died to A5 Sirus and I think I'm going to take a break from the game, since it's been taking up a lot of my time lately.
When I come back, I'll definitely be trying A0 Sirus to get the mechanics first. Thanks for the tips everyone! Here's my final build as of today.
4.8m boss damage (Righteous Fire, Conductivity, Elemental Overload), 2.7m normal mob damage (only Righteous Fire).
3.6k life, 8.1k mana, 50% block, 50% damage to mana
Thanks again for everyone's tips! I had a lot of fun gearing up and getting to (but not finishing endgame content. Here are a few notes before I uninstall for now, both build-related and general:
This game is not easy to learn. Whenever I encountered a new mechanic (Temple, Syndicate, Blight, Delve, and Atlas), I tried to read an article/guide about it. I honestly don't know what I'd do without reading those - some of the mechanics are not intuitive at all. After reading the guides, this cheatsheet was great as a quick reference.
The increased mana recovery rate is very easy to craft on a belt with Lucent fossils. In theory, you'll get it once every 5 rolls (25 chaos), which isn't bad for an end-game belt if you have some currency. I got lucky and got a belt with a T1 mana + resist roll after ~10, but I'd saved up 25 Lucent fossils, which I felt was enough. A Shaper influence Stygian Vise is very expensive though, but it could be worth doing this on a non-Stygian Vise belt early on.
In addition to making currency mapping/selling good stuff I found, I made a LOT of my early money through selling Alva temple corruptions. This included my first exalt (for a gem double-corrupt) and another 8 exalt (for an item double-corrupt). The Forbidden Trove Discord was great for this.
For gear upgrades, I made pretty complex searches and just bookmarked them in Chrome. This isn't for everyone, but whenever I start a session playing, I do a quick check of all the bookmarks to see if I spot any deals. That's how I got a lot of my gear. Pricing varied wildly for good gear, and it let me gear up really quickly for pretty cheap. When looking for modifier lists, I used the POE wiki and craftofexile.com. I often search using the "Count" setting for at least 2 prefixes and 2 suffixes I want.
The point of the recommended cluster jewels in this build is not to get more damage, but rather to sacrifice some damage for better survivability, through additional block (Mage Hunter, Conjured Wall) and life/chaos resistance (Blessed). They are worth it in that sense, but only after you have good base damage through having lots of mana/+ damage items.
For the cluster jewels, finding good additional modifiers (+resists, +mana regen) could help a ton, as you'll probably have at least 3 small nodes to path through. That being said, the Large cluster jewels are expensive no matter what you get, so this is more of a luxury. It's much cheaper to find the right mods for your small jewels in particular.
I somehow accidentally got the map completion bonus for ~75 maps all at once when I completed the Maze of the Minotaur Shaper map that I got through a Zana master mission. I got something similar when I finished the Pit of the Chimera map, and got a screenshot. Not sure if this is a bug, but it was a fast way to get my map completion up.
Good luck to anyone else following this guide! I did think the progression was very smooth, and for someone who'd played Diablo 2, Arc being like chain lightning definitely makes it easier.
Last edited by arciinus#5883 on Dec 18, 2020, 7:25:22 AM
I just failed another A8 run recently, mainly due to two reasons:
* there is significant lagging, I often walk out of safety zone causing more Deatomization Storm, or just walk into deadly zones.
* the visualization of Meteor Maze always fail to render on my machine, and I had to rely on exit flares which are not easy to find route, sometimes easy to walk out of satety zone as well.
In the end there are too many Storms in the battle ground, I was not able to find good place to hide during phases.
A youtube link about me fighting A8 Sirus but died 4 times. (Asked for a carrier service after that...)
I just failed another A8 run recently, mainly due to two reasons:
* there is significant lagging, I often walk out of safety zone causing more Deatomization Storm, or just walk into deadly zones.
* the visualization of Meteor Maze always fail to render on my machine, and I had to rely on exit flares which are not easy to find route, sometimes easy to walk out of satety zone as well.
In the end there are too many Storms in the battle ground, I was not able to find good place to hide during phases.
Any suggestions / helps are super welcome!
My fps is only around 7 in the fight, and around 30 in hideout.
I'm sorry to say this but at the frame rate you're trying it at you're just going to have to get lucky and it is going to be a very difficult fight. The entirety of the fight is just too bound up in the mechanics of the fight and you not being able to see them is a real challenge. The inability to determine where Sirus is would seem to be the biggest blocker, keeping an eye on that bastard and staying close to him is essential to being able to dodge things that are designed to delete you quickly.
I don't play many action games, usually just strategy games, and when playing with my prior graphics card and CPU I would often run into issues where the action stutters and I wouldn't move out of the way of something which lead to dying. Now that I have upgraded them a bit, still not to FPS standards for the GPU, getting a consistent framerate of close to 60 with medium and low settings has resolved a lot of those issues. For the mapping framerate it also seems that CPU can be more of a bottleneck than in other games, seems like there is just a lot of calculations being made about what is going on and that is separate from showing them on the screen.
My fps is only around 7 in the fight, and around 30 in hideout.
7 FPS feels way too low for the fight. I recommend upping your "Target Framerate" for dynamic resolution significantly (I set it to 30). This might make your graphics look really blurry, but it's better to be able to see things happening than have a really choppy experience.
One other hack I'd read about, turn on the "Show Mini Life Bars on Enemies". With our crappy graphics, it helps a lot in finding the real Sirus when he does the clone beam, and in finding him in general.
Last edited by arciinus#5883 on Dec 18, 2020, 5:32:01 PM
I'm sorry to say this but at the frame rate you're trying it at you're just going to have to get lucky and it is going to be a very difficult fight. The entirety of the fight is just too bound up in the mechanics of the fight and you not being able to see them is a real challenge. The inability to determine where Sirus is would seem to be the biggest blocker, keeping an eye on that bastard and staying close to him is essential to being able to dodge things that are designed to delete you quickly.
I don't play many action games, usually just strategy games, and when playing with my prior graphics card and CPU I would often run into issues where the action stutters and I wouldn't move out of the way of something which lead to dying. Now that I have upgraded them a bit, still not to FPS standards for the GPU, getting a consistent framerate of close to 60 with medium and low settings has resolved a lot of those issues. For the mapping framerate it also seems that CPU can be more of a bottleneck than in other games, seems like there is just a lot of calculations being made about what is going on and that is separate from showing them on the screen.
Yeah, this fight is still difficult even with all the understanding of mechanics. I just try to see whether there is a chance to improve setup bit. It is weird GGG made the decision to create a boss with difficulty barred by machine quality...
For mapping I found my crappy laptop is quite OK though, as you mentioned CPU can be a bottleneck instead, while my current bottleneck seems to be GPU.
My fps is only around 7 in the fight, and around 30 in hideout.
7 FPS feels way too low for the fight. I recommend upping your "Target Framerate" for dynamic resolution significantly (I set it to 30). This might make your graphics look really blurry, but it's better to be able to see things happening than have a really choppy experience.
One other hack I'd read about, turn on the "Show Mini Life Bars on Enemies". With our crappy graphics, it helps a lot in finding the real Sirus when he does the clone beam, and in finding him in general.
Thanks for the suggestion! Will try a higher Target Framerate to see how things get improved.
Will also try to see whether a Mac helps. Do you have windows installed on Mac, or are you running a Mac version of POE?
