[3.0] AFK Gone Cheap - AFK up to T16 guardians||Shaper killed || 3.0 balls video montage!

As OP has pointed out, avoid lightning thorns. Scriptorium and Promenade. I dunno if there's any realistic way of doing them. Maybe with lighting res flask (Vinktars is useless, just get lightning res flask for more charges. I mean, you need shock remove flask otherwise).

In general however, mapping is easy as hell. For t1-14 maps I use Rat Cage all the time on me. I don't bother really. For t15 maps it depends on mods. I might use Kaoms. A lot of maps in terms of bosses are pretty much the same: just run on forward and forward, pick the loot you want and get to the boss and burn the boss down quick.

Only real advice I can give is that some bosses have sweet spots in regards to when you should use VMS. For example, It That Fell; you should not initiate with VMS. Just run to it, let it go up. Next time it's on the ground, use VMS. Twinned bosses and multiple bosses: Vaal Cyclone is your friend. Although it's also your enemy in terms of leveling reliably.

Only map mods that I would avoid completely are ones with no leech and ones with %chance to avoid status ailments. I did Overgrown Ruins with twinned bosses, +35% damage on unique boss and attack speed & movement speed on unique boss. And on top of that, elemental reflect. Yes, this build can somehow do elemental reflect and it's not nearly as bad as you'd imagine. However, I'd still be bit cautious with ele reflect. It feels bit different than other stuff out there. I ripped once in that Overgrown Ruins map and it wasn't in the boss room.

I have so far tried every guardian but Phoenix. I have had 0 successes, but I've never even done them before. I've tried Chimera once*, Hydra once and Minotaur twice. My feedback is based on map mods that gave no increased damage to bosses and no crit modifiers. I advise to avoid such mods completely. Generally speaking, the issue with some guardians is that your screen is filled with effects and you have hard time seeing what the boss is going to do.

VERY IMPORTANT INFO: I use either Rats Cage of non-legacy 500 life Kaoms Heart. With Kaoms I have 8k health. I do not like spamming BV so I just run around with 4l rats cage most of the time, but in t16 maps mostly I use Kaoms, unless Hydra or Minotaur where you want to vaal molten shell spam.

*technically I have done Chimera twice. First time was deathless. Except it was with a BV build guildie. It was super easy with him, but you're pretty useless with your DPS in comparison to a 450ex BV build, it turns out. I've also tried minotaur once with him, got instagibbed. Mino is really annoying.

Minotaur



Hydra



Chimera



Phoenix



Regarding Shaper, I think it's simply impossible. You can't simply have vaal charges before the phases. If you could, it would be very easy (and Vaal RF builds would be super happy about it). But since you can't, you simply lack the damage to deal with Shaper quickly enough. With that being said, I want to try it some day, just because. For Shaper clear, you want to roll something else, not this.

Also another tip: you might want to actually have multiple Vaal Molten Shell gems for guardian maps and just load them up in a sequence. For example, you might have essence that you think should be dealt with VMS. So you do it. Then you realize you're about 40 charges away from loaded VMS. But... less than 10 monsters left in the map and bossroom is next. Yup, you won't be using VMS. The charges will still hold even if you put the gem in your inventory. Level them in your swap weapons, should be fairly easy task. Also, it allows you to try to use VMS multiple times. Technically speaking, with some clever weapon swapping & 2x scepters with Hysteria (and Razor of the Sventh Sun), you could even burst down Chimera very easily through all the phases and have the fastest clearspeed of Chimera in category of 10ex builds. And you have multiple chances to do Minotaur (and possibly Hydra) with VMS as well, in case you die. I'm not sure however if Chimera can be facetanked with Rat's Cage. The mob phases are kind of scary. All this requires further testing by me, I'll report the results eventually if I get to it. But I'll be going legacy league so that might not be anytime soon. With same trick, you could also potentially trivialize Shaper. But it means you gotta swap your gems mid-fight. This is doable in Shaper to some extent, I guess, but it's really pushing it.

Surpisingly, uber lab is not hard at all necessarily. I tried today the first time, to carry a friend through. Accidentally stumbled into Argos and he was kinda scary, but I think with 8k hp, he cannot kill you. Sadly, however, Argos is immune to ignite. The fight lasted for 5 minutes or so. Since he was not able to kill me (and I did not use fortify at all), I think it's safe to say that you can afk through Argos. Whenever 3-4 minutes (solo) for 1 key is worth it is up to you. I would pass unless I would accidentally stumble on him. At some points of the fight, he got my hp down pretty low and it was kind of scary, so I wouldn't be 100% sure about afkability of Argos. But during 5 minutes, a lot of hits were received from ARgos.

Also, it should be pointed out that I used Kaoms Heart. Rat Cage is completely pointless in Uber Lab, because you can't get vaal charges to Izaro fights. And probably a stretch to get them reliably for Argos as well and they wouldn't necessarily help a lot because Argos still can't be ignited.

My friend walked into the first Izaro bossroom and he died there, after which I continued solo. First one had Gargoyles. I did not do the mechanics, so he was buffed with them. Second Izaro was conduits, which got me worried about his last phase, as they're kinda infamous. Then I got into the last room and... yeah, I just stood there. He teleported me couple of times into traps as I was talking to guildies at the same time. It's kinda annoying and you can just whirl out of the green circle.

Since it was fully buffed with conduits, I think it's safe to say that this build has no issues with Izaro what-so-ever. The traps were also spike & those circle shaped saw blades. Burning is not a problem for sure. And I think the darts are also non-issue. Both of the moving ones (blades and the spinning spikes) are probably the worst ones if you're not doing any damage at the same time. If you are, razor ignite leech should take care of them.

For potions, you have no other option but eternal flasks, at least 3-4. And one bubbling panic flask would probably not hurt, although I feel that I don't need it. The reason is obvious: you're life build and you use vaal pact. Luckily, since this build does not require any flasks, it literally doesn't matter that you just stack 5 life flasks. However, I recommend one Chemists Quicksilver Flask of Adrenaline as well (to get 3 use quicksilver with 26% increased movement speed). Also, although OP guide states that you don't need movement speed boots; for lab you really want 20% at least. Uber to be specific.

At some point I will want to try charge mechanic and have fully charged Izaro. If successful, then I want to try out charged & conduit Izaro, which is probably the worst. Not sure if that can even occur, but let's hope so.

However, regardless of how easy it is to deal with Izaro, i would not recommend this build actually for farming lab. Three reasons: killing Argus is very slow, traps are kind of scary and killing Izaro is slow. Maybe it's a solid build for clearing lab in 10ex~ price range, but it's still not a good lab clear build unless you're like me and want something that is less stressful with Izaro. I still hate traps so much that I generally avoid doing lab. Vaal Pact isn't really a problem since you can just stack life flasks; traps are annoying because they are traps.

Although OP did cover some flasks, there is one flask that was not covered for some reason:



Why? Simple reason: sometimes you're so lazy that you don't even want to wait for any mobs to hit you and instead you'd like to just start rolling. This flask is the key to do that. I have two of these. The endurance & frenzy charges are just a bonus. Frenzy charges help your whirling blades and endurance charges help against damage. Unfortunately, as nice as they sound, you can't really keep them up in any situation where they truly would matter. So they're just a bonus.

For mapping, my flask setup is following:



I don't really use Onslaught much at all, it's almost useless and probably better idea to replace it with a life flask that has bleed on remove. It would have saved my life many times. I just like to clear stuff about 1% quicker and onslaught helps with that. It's still useless, so please don't be stupid like I am. I also don't know if there is a single situation out there where Basalt Flask would have helped me. You can't reliably keep it up. It could be replaced with another Doedres (trust me, you will feel like you never have enough of them) or just another lifeflask. Or use lifeflask and onslaught.

A solid option would be to use staunching lifeflask + quicksilver with shock immunity. But staunching lifeflasks have a huge downside: the effect ends as soon as hp reaches to 100%. So basically, all it does is it removes bleed stacks.

There's some issues with Vaal Molten Shell and I'll talk about them here.


So, how does it work? Every time you take phys damage, your VMS procs. There's one issue though: unless your VMS has 100% chance to proc ignite, it cannot sustain itself. Let's take a closer look.

VMS with 20 quality has 20% chance to ignite. With my current gear I also have 45% base chance to ignite. That's 65% chance to ignite. With level 20 flammability I also get 10% chance to ignite. So in total, 75% chance to ignite. This is nice. But... it means that every fourth hit won't ignite. After that happens, you will have to receive physical damage from something else to cause another potential "chain".

What it means is that you can't just pop out VMS and hope that it sustains itself. You need to be taking damage. If you don't have plenty of firestorms up and have only single target that doesn't hit you constantly, you won't be able to actually sustain VMS.

There's two ways to work around this. Easiest way is to get vaal cyclone. A super useful vaal skill especially for bossrooms that have multiple bosses. You pop in first Vaal Molten Shell and then vaal cyclone and suck everything inside. Even if you don't have firestorms or anything like that, vaal cyclone will be constantly igniting and dealing phys dmg to you through rat cage. Sometimes, however, this doesn't work like it should. And it's also not good skill if you want to level up, because you will often encounter a situation where you should be moving away from elemental orbs (as all packs are dead) and yet you are still spinning. For strongboxes I would rather recommend using this without VMS (you will still deal ton of damage, just not instagib everything that touches you). For essences this is good combination. For most bosses this is good combination, except for some (like Racecourse), where you might die to degen after the boss kill because of desc. ground that will be left. DO NOT use this gem with increased duration. I have used Ngamahus flame build with vaal cyclone and as my friend with same build said; it's a love-hate relationship.

Second way to deal with this is %chance to ignite gem. You can then chain VMS without any problems. But you will lose conc effect. I would actually recommend this way, although I haven't tried it that much myself yet. It seems to still be able to dish out a ton of damage regardless of whenever you are getting hit or not. But it still feels definitively slower than what you get if you had multiple firestorms. Or maybe it's just the lack of concentrated effect. I dunno. But I plan to try this on Minotaur in near future.

Generally speaking, minmaxing this is really hard, but having 6l Rat Cage would really help here. Problem is that all the gems are off-color. So I wish you good luck getting 5-6 off color Rats Cage. Honestly, I think smarter thing to do is to have separate pair of str gloves that you'd use with Rats cage with 2r 2b sockets, whereas you put your normal CWDT setup in rats cage. Hell, you could 6l that rats cage and put even more spells there... if you wanted. Kinda pointless though. I use portal gem & vaal cyclone in my 4l rat cage.

The min/max Rat Cage setup would be something like VMS, conc effect, fire pen, inc duration, controlled destruction and... lvl4 enhance. Lvl4 enhance will provide 24q to your gems. In case of Vaal Molten Shell, that means 24% extra ignite chance. The rest you can get from jewels (I got one jewel with 2% ignite, just turn it into 3%). It is actually very insane setup, because your inc duration will also have 12% higher modifier. And rest will just add up in damage.

With this setup, I think you would practically delete anything that isn't immune to ignites. At least delete a phase.

As for the rest of us who don't have ton of exalts to spend into trying to get 5 offcolor, it depends on what colors you get into your 4-5l. lvl4 enhance can replace ignite chance. But any additional green sockets will be useless in the links, I'd just use them for purity of lightning or portal gem.


With this setup, I honestly think you could "oneshot" fairly easily Minotaur and/or Hydra. It might seem like an overkill, but the added damage might be crucial for following reasons: both have the capacity to oneshot you easily with rats cage and Hydra can suddenly disappear.

Few alternatives to get 100% chance to ignite with VMS: Abberrath's Hooves + lvl3 eenhance gem. Then again, you could just spend all that currency into lvl4 enhance and save some as well. So why on earth would you do this? Except that Whirling Blades will actually be fun to spam, I guess. Sadly, you will gimp yourself for t16 bossfights, as you need all the life you can get.

Gang's Momentum with 7% ignite roll. You will need to work probably harder with ignite jewels, but it's an alternative.

Another alternative is Doryani's Invitation. But I think you can guess what I'm about to say. Yeah. You will gimp yourself for t16 bossfights. However, technically speaking, Basalt Flask could mitigate the difference. But I'd rather have the life AND basalt flask while I'm trying. This is the cheapest alternative, actually, but it also hurts most as belts are the largest source of life you can have. I'd lose about 130 flat life.

Also, additional gloves just for fun (my resistances are still capped even with them), which work especially in Dried Lake groups. I really recommend these when you want just to have some fun. They are absolutely useless for any other purpose:

Just try them and you'll see what they are all about. Protip: go to a Dried Lake exp farm group and don't stop killing.

Look, this build is fun. It's also laggy, but the funfactor is like 10x and you just forget about the lag. However, for some people it's not fun at all. Namely, people that have slow computers and that run with you in a group. You should warn people that your build is laggy. You should leave Dried Lake groups if people are complaining about lag or saying that they die because they can't move. You should DEFNITIVELY make sure that the person you play with will know what you are going to do in the bossroom and that she can stay further away. You don't want to be respnsible for lvl95 toon losing 10% exp only so you can surprise them with your build effectiveness.

For most people though, they admire the build and love our VMS effect. It looks really cool. But, I also managed once to open up an essence (with 3 essences), use VMS and vaal cyclone and basically get 1 frame per 5 seconds of prolonged epicness. However, it was kind of a killjoy once the smoke cleared and the whole group of 6 people wiped. Nobody knows to what, we all just were dead afterwards. It was super fun though and nobody minded it (since 10% exp at that level isn't much).

For bossfights in groups, you really need 100% ignite on vaal molten shell or vaal cyclone. Without that, you will often find yourself a non-climatic vaal molten shell use.