[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

Friend of mine gave me the Shaper kill (could've done it myself), but the end-game grinds challenges, guardians, Shaper etc. I did not do with CA.

I rolled a T-Shot poison build to get those done myself.

You're always welcome here, Jadran. As you know by now we don't restrict our discussions to CA so feel free to pop in here with OT stuff anytime you want.

Not that it matters for CA, but did everyone catch the Facebreakers nerf in the notes?

Yeah I saw it.

So, are there any changings to this build in 2.5?

For anyone doing any sort of raider and also trying it in MF gear, I'd appreciate veteran opinions on how it compares to this CA build. Most of my playtime is MFing T1-5 maps and I can't find anything that improves on this guide for that.

Flicker clears so much faster but overshoots and has to backtrack to pick shit up all the time. I tried using flicker with whirling blades for movement so I could use both Greed's and Goldwyrm, but whirling kinda sucks for picking items up since it can't always land you right on top of the item so you still end up taking many steps at slow movement. Anything I tried with Windripper for a little extra IQ/IR just spent noticeably more time stopping and shooting than CA.

I have a feeling the insane raider MS with something like blade flurry could make for a better low map farmer both in terms of movement and total IQ/IR. Then again, I also have a feeling just making any meta DPS whore build and farming Shaper or selling T15/16 maps might actually be even better currency than doing low maps these days. Thoughts?

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Гаруспик wrote:

So, are there any changings to this build in 2.5?

Should be untouched unless a new unique gives us a ton of movement/MF/damage.

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chimurestaurat wrote:

For anyone doing any sort of raider and also trying it in MF gear, I'd appreciate veteran opinions on how it compares to this CA build. Most of my playtime is MFing T1-5 maps and I can't find anything that improves on this guide for that.

Flicker clears so much faster but overshoots and has to backtrack to pick shit up all the time. I tried using flicker with whirling blades for movement so I could use both Greed's and Goldwyrm, but whirling kinda sucks for picking items up since it can't always land you right on top of the item so you still end up taking many steps at slow movement. Anything I tried with Windripper for a little extra IQ/IR just spent noticeably more time stopping and shooting than CA.

I have a feeling the insane raider MS with something like blade flurry could make for a better low map farmer both in terms of movement and total IQ/IR. Then again, I also have a feeling just making any meta DPS whore build and farming Shaper or selling T15/16 maps might actually be even better currency than doing low maps these days. Thoughts?

"

Гаруспик wrote:

So, are there any changings to this build in 2.5?

Should be untouched unless a new unique gives us a ton of movement/MF/damage.

I'll probably end up rolling Raider Cyclone / Reave to start. Not sure what I'll be doing to add any MF, if I even bother, since non-spell builds are inherently more difficult to add MF without sacrificing a lot of dps, but I'll give it a shot once I'm established and report back here.

If you're willing to do Shaper runs ad nauseam, then yeah, it likely is more profitable than MFing. I haven't tried it out myself, but I've heard you get a Starforge on average roughly every 8 runs or so?

Sets after a month of Essence were something like 48c apiece. Starforge I think was going for 6ex at that point and chaos was roughly 65:1c. So eight sets being 384c, and Starforge being 390c equivalent, it was roughly break-even but you'd profit off selling the map drops.

You can make more money doing Uber Izaro, Uber Atziri, Shaper, if you're willing to dedicate literally all of your playing time to it, and especially if you're willing to provide services for it.

Otherwise, MF nets you roughly an additional 0.2-0.5ex/hr (depending on how quickly you're able to do vendor trips) strictly in terms of straight up mapping, even at low tiers. People tend to forget how reliable MF is, that it brute forces the RNG wheel, and that you aren't backtracking all the time like you have to in a clear-speed build in order to pick up the good bases, do the 5x vendor recipe on said bases, sell your maps, blah blah etc. All the little things you have to do in order to generate currency in a clear speed build essentially amounts to the same time spent per map as an MFer, even including vendor trips, and you aren't reliant on RNG tipping in your favour.

Some very interesting points, Serleth.
BTW, did you get the news where GGG discovered a loot filter bug that has been present in the engine since loot filters were introduced? Apparently this bug could cut your DPS down massively, as the filter was parsed every frame, instead of every time something drops. This is huge news, I'm really happy they found it.

Yeah, I'm interested to see how it'll effect me in maps. At the end of the day before I log I'm probably gonna switch to my MFer to test things out, see how much it improves.

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Jadran wrote:

Some very interesting points, Serleth.
BTW, did you get the news where GGG discovered a loot filter bug that has been present in the engine since loot filters were introduced? Apparently this bug could cut your DPS down massively, as the filter was parsed every frame, instead of every time something drops. This is huge news, I'm really happy they found it.

OMG. I use a bloody massive loot filter...

Hi Serleth, you mentioned that you might be rolling a Cyclone Raider, any extra details or thoughts since your post on the previous page?