[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

See some skill changes to think about here in recent posts...

I feel what others do on the trading market... feels like there is very little of value to sell this league... last decent sales were the 20% lvl 1 gems I made in my off-slots from finishing leveling my Essense Drain supports... Void Manipulation/etc...

I need to eventually recoup my IIR losses from switching in Ventor's Gamble for Andvarius in my neck/helm/glove mods, but still waiting to mastermod my Bow...

I tried Malformation Piety for the first time (Vaal Orb up-roll working on challenge)... I clearly didn't know what I was doing and died 2x... first deaths in several levels (lvl 88)... First death I figured was flustered killing trash and then trying to run around her during beam with bad red ball obstacle placement... 2nd try wasn't much better so I moved on... otherwise been smooth sailing t1-t9... haven't tried progressing t10+ yet... working on challenges has slowed me down...

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Razorwind wrote:

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horstkaracho wrote:

Well first and foremost: drop the pierce gem and get an empower lvl 2 or 3. Since you skilled all the pierce nodes and the ascendancy the gem will only give you the proj dmg. Better to up your base dmg. Now my 2 cents: See if you can't drop clarity. You shouldn't need it anymore. Run Purity of Elements or any purity you need instead, if you can manage + grace. This will make it way easier to swap gear and the build isn't mana hungry anyway. I have never used clarity. Neither Arctic Armour. I may be wrong but i found it more comfortable to just increase my life pool and run around more. Get life on your ammy, since you won't be needing that much res now it should be easy to find one with life and iir. Get a Frenzy lvl 1 gem instead of 19 and you can run any reflect map while cursing all the time. If you have a couple ex, get a 6l +3 bow by one of the ways described in the op and in the last few pages. Get at least 1 decent ventors gamble with iiq. Use wither totem for soloing.

My Gear for comparison (5k hp, 22k something tooltip damage, 37/310 or so, can't log in now. Disregard Aoe Gem, I use Rarity for solo)

Yup, trying to level up an empower gem now, almost LVL2 soon. Thanks for the feedback =)
The OP build says to drop essence drain once we have deadeye, I see some builds still carry it for single target? Not too sure how I can utilize this skill, it tends to hit some minions rather that the targeted boss?

Yeah you can easily drop essence drain. I don't really use it all that much anyway. Without projectile speed it'S a really clunky skill imo. Still, I've got the 5l and nothing much to fill it with, so why not. It comes in handy in group play situations where you don't really care about getting the last hit or simply can't get it anyway. If you lack the survivability then drop it and run something else.

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Piros wrote:

See some skill changes to think about here in recent posts...

I feel what others do on the trading market... feels like there is very little of value to sell this league... last decent sales were the 20% lvl 1 gems I made in my off-slots from finishing leveling my Essense Drain supports... Void Manipulation/etc...

I need to eventually recoup my IIR losses from switching in Ventor's Gamble for Andvarius in my neck/helm/glove mods, but still waiting to mastermod my Bow...

I tried Malformation Piety for the first time (Vaal Orb up-roll working on challenge)... I clearly didn't know what I was doing and died 2x... first deaths in several levels (lvl 88)... First death I figured was flustered killing trash and then trying to run around her during beam with bad red ball obstacle placement... 2nd try wasn't much better so I moved on... otherwise been smooth sailing t1-t9... haven't tried progressing t10+ yet... working on challenges has slowed me down...

Trading is mainly about volume and time imo. If you have 10+ p2w tabs and are online a lot, the orbs will keep rolling in. It definitely helps to have a rough idea how much smth is worth the moment you find it and just drop it in the right tab. If you haven't sold smth in a while you can also just reprice whole tabs from 5c to 4c for example. Don't hold yourself up trying to price every single item correctly. That's time better spend in maps. Throw in some master mods if you can, so people can findd your item easier. Most still are a little fuzzy about what affixes are open or simply don't search that detailed. So if you have a 2 res ring, throw in a third, 5c tab, back to mapping. Stuff like that.

I still sometimes die on mal piety. the main thing is to run a big circle when she casts her balls and a small one when she does the beam. This way the balls won't be in your way.

I've probly spent 200 regals now trying to craft a dual resist bow =/
Hope I am doing it right..
I am using bowstation to add Dex to make it blue
Then Regaling to try and get +2bow skills
then scouring and repeat.

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permallama wrote:

I've probly spent 200 regals now trying to craft a dual resist bow =/
Hope I am doing it right..
I am using bowstation to add Dex to make it blue
Then Regaling to try and get +2bow skills
then scouring and repeat.

Don't say that... I'm getting ready to start mastercrafting my own bow tomorrow... got all the exalts... 50/50 scour/regal, few hundred alts... hope its enough or I'll need to convert more currency around...

@horst... I have the p2w tabs... been pretty aggressively price dropping... trying to 1ex/40c/30c/20c/10c/7c/5c/2c/1c/vendor method (shift prices all down a layer every day or so until sold/vendored)... maybe I need more low number tabs... and been using poeprices.info to price items i dont know well once a day or so as well...

...and despite my comments before, both my big ticket items sold today... spell dagger with 75% spell dmg and spell crit on crit base dagger with open mastercraft crit mod... and heavy resist/ES shield... made nearly 2ex there which financed starting my +3 bow

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SirTox wrote:

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Serleth wrote:

I don't really see where you mean that I will be missing a minimum of six skill point. To reach your tree from the duelist starting point it only takes five points, and two of those five points give increased life and evasion which is useful. So in my mind i'm only missing out on three skill points.

I just fell like you're misusing the Trickster tree. The hero stat in "Shade Form" is the 250 ES. But since you're going Acro you will not be building ES. And 500 base evasion is honestly not that much. Less than 1/5 than a level 20 grace gives you.

And I would rather not rely on dodge/evasion as a main part of my defense. I'd rather reduce the damage of a big hit, than have a chance to dodge.

You can basically say that fortify gives you 24% more life, recovery and regen. And since I feel that the evasion i get from Trickster isn't much at all, I'd rather sacrifice three skill points to roll a Champion, So I can use Fortify, Evasion and Acro efficiently.

I'll concede the three points, but that's still three points.

Shade Form is about the 20% MORE evasion chance when not on full ES. The amount of ES you get is irrelevant, it's the multiplicative evasion chance that scales with Grace and your other gear. Given how fast you're SUPPOSED to play the build, you should basically never be on full ES.

I don't get where you're seeing that Fortify gives you 24% more life. It's reduced damage taken, not less.

I don't know how else to phrase it but it's seriously not worth sacrificing three points given the dodge/spell dodge and multiplicative evasion boost from Trickster. If you're playing evasion correctly, it decimates Fortify.

20% reduced damage taken (before buffs) isn't enough to make a difference when you're dealing with things that are going to one-shot you unless you're really investing in life off the tree and gear, and sacrificing MF to do it, and scaling armour rather than evasion. The Orchard boss on a rippy rolled map is still going to one-shot, Fortify or not.

Besides, the whole point of the SC variants of the build isn't about making sure you get to level 100. It's about steamrolling content and farming like mad, mostly in T8 maps or less, with the option of running T14s if you want. So if all you're doing is speed farming =<T8, you're not even going to feel the difference with Fortify anyway because you're not playing difficult enough content where it's going to actually save you in any given situation.

Like I said, if you're playing HC and changing the build accordingly, there's an argument to be made for it. But not for SC. SC's about murdering the hell out of things as fast as possible, and being willing to sacrifice the odd death here and there. Hence, Scion for SC.

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permallama wrote:

I've probly spent 200 regals now trying to craft a dual resist bow =/
Hope I am doing it right..
I am using bowstation to add Dex to make it blue
Then Regaling to try and get +2bow skills
then scouring and repeat.

Cripes, with that kind of success rate, you could have just converted your regals to exalts and paid a bit more for the crafting.

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Chronodroid wrote:

hehe ty :)

was at 9/12 for enchants before starting a session of merciless labruns yesterday (target: trap, aura, curse), now I'm just missing the trap enchant. 50 runs total, average of 8 minutes (5min best one, 13min slowest).

I need to wait for a day that has no golden doors to farm that I guess.. just tedious and not really an achievement after you beat the lab 100+ times. today's lab has even two doors.. blergh

and ofcourse Zana is a stretch for guys with full-time employment + RL, but so what ^^ I'll get that lady in red to level 8 nevertheless.

whatcha missing hank? I could chip in with this or that, who knows =)

the effects are lovely indeed, worth all the trouble imo! the sound effect of the perandus portal, right when you start a map, is breath-taking!

Grats on 40!

I think I'm on course for 40 myself albeit at a much slower pace; I got side-tracked into funding 2 other builds (one of which I haven't even started playing yet, LOL) and I hit a bad streak of luck when after tossing Vaal orbs onto 7 of my primary skill gems, not a single one hit level 21 - as a consequence I lost 2ex purchasing a level 21.

Yeah... I'm missing the totem-enchant for a helm to complete the enchant achievement; got tired of running labs though, so that's for another day.

Nice that you finished off Zana so quickly - mine's only about 1/2 way though level 7 and I've been doing rotations since day 2 of the league.

del

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Piros wrote:

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sixer wrote:

Hi again all

When is it "safe" to do merc lab? Im 84 with 4350 health.

Swear i read something in this post before but i cant find it anymore. Help would be appreciated.

Also what ascendancy does the trickster go after the normal/cruel points are spent?

I was ALMOST able to do it around that level with 3750HP and only 10k tooltip DPS, was relatively easy to do at 3800HP with 12k tooltip DPS and the nodes past Acro and levelled Grace... finally did Argus Merciless at 3900HP, 15k tooltip DPS and more kiting...

NOTE: The roughest thing for me about Izaro was getting comfortable trap-weaving in Phase 3...

Interesting, do you play HC? I am only really fearing Izaro in the trap room myself. The rest i think i can micro. My other fear is that my tooltip damage is only at 7k so ill be in the fight longer than i want to be. I do havea friend that does big damage, that might help.

Very close to being able to afford my bow craft but im struggling to 6-link my maraketh atm..

If it didnt take me so long to level i could grab those extra few life passives.. being in HC i should of done them already tbh.