Torment/Bloodlines One Month Event (Standard)

(Continued from above)

For this race, it started on March 23rd.

I had a problem... I have 2 fingers but only 1

All of my friends who had 2 were calling me a noob.

I decided on March 23rd, that I needed and wanted to commit to getting another, and this race seemed a prime opportunity. Go look in the first page of this thread, you will see where I announced my goal, throwing down my gauntlet inviting competition.

The first step to achieving my goal was ensuring that I could maintain "No Life" status during the period of this race. This is not a decision to take lightly. I knew, from experience, that to achieve my goals for the race that I would need to play about 350 to 450 hours of POE during the month of April. It is a luxury that my career and life in the real world offers me opportunities to make such decadent decisions, such as devoting this much time to a video game. I understand that the majority of players cannot devote such time to eccentricities such as this. The ability, and choice, to make other sacrifices in the real world such that I can play POE for a month is the foundation required by the majority of teams which achieve POE accomplishments, not just mine. This fact gets joked about a lot, but it doesn't often get explicit acknowledgement. Look at the /AGE and /PLAYED of any top POE players and you will get an insight into the commitment required to attain these TOP TIER objectives.

The second step is to find a handful of other crazy people who are also prepared to live this monastic life with me for a month, for this league I ultimately aligned with Woods and Porter, though there were about 100 other friends and guild members who helped us immensely during the league and who have our appreciation.

For the three days before the league I took melatonin and set lighting differently in my sleep space to align my body to the time of my group.

Before the start of the league I had 40-50 hours of planning discussions with my core team about our builds, our objectives, our market strategies, our concerns.

The minute the league began I was online, I had a group of benevolent friends who was prepared to carry me to level 60 so I could spec my endgame build from the outset to avoid the need for respec.

Our primary market assumption for this league, was that thousands of players from both HC and SC would desire to complete the challenges, and that significant currency could be generated in being among the first, most reputable, and most visible selling the Boss Kills. We knew it would generate significant early league currency. We did not in our wildest dreams understand just how much currency this "Service" would provide. It was insane.

Porter rushed to top ladder position as fast as possible.

Woods rushed for Uber Atziri with the support of a significant player base and his nine brothers (Go Bahrain ! WILLEMA NESSINESS) whom he had rallied the week before the race.

Each of us attained the first stage of our plan with deft skill and quickness, and the support of our friends and early league teammates. You must understand that during the first 72 hours of a league up to the first week of a league there are HUNDREDS of awesome people who play just to enjoy the rush of leveling the content with so much activity and player base. It is amazing fun. I played with KG and TKNR, and SHAD and so many other awesome people the first week who then basically quit the league to await act 4 leaving us with what resources they had mustered so that we could continue with our plan.

Next you must understand, in this game, being the first, GIVES A HUGE ECONOMIC AND MARKET ADVANTAGE.

We were among the first into maps, the first to kill Atziri, the first to kill UBER.

I am the poorest, most ineffective early league trader when comparing myself to Woods and Porter. This being the case, I still made over 3000 chaos selling iLVL 78+ Harbingers, Diamond Rings, Armor, and other popular bases. I immediately started using this currency to flip popular leveling items, quickly amassing a few hundred exalts worth of net worth in the first week.

Woods and Porters plan made me look like a street beggar.

Woods was selling Atziri drops faster than anyone else and his brothers and guild-mates were flipping and trading for him almost 24 hours a day on their accounts to keep him blazing Atziri runs 50-60 at a time. He quickly had 50 UBER sets stacked up. Through Arbitrage trades Woods picked up a Harbinger that I would value at around 800 exalts, that easily set him up for UBER.

Porter was chaining shrines making 20-50 chaos A SLOT for people who wanted the challenge kills. Think about that, porters return on a shrine, a map he could solo in 6.5 mins at that point in the league, was 100 chaos MINIMUM. He was making 50-60 exalts a day for a few days in this fashion. Early league it is easy to make investments which will triple or quadruple as there is such a constrained currency base. Porter picked up a 6 link Carcass Jack and geared himself faster than any previous league.

When woods started doing his 50-60 UBER runs we decided that we would monopilize maps.

There were so few people doing UBER, and we knew most of them, that we predicted, accurately, that it would be easy to corner maps.

As a team, the three of us set aside 1000 exalts to the sole purpose of buying all 78 maps that were for sale. This was a strategic move on our part, not to profit, but to diminish the map pool available on the market to our competitors as much as possible.

Woods had a windfall in his chaining of UBER runs.

In addition to the hundred or so 78 maps that he got, he also got at least three Acutiy and at least 15 axes. After the first Acutiy he was unstoppable in UBER, his farm rate doubled.

At this phase he had passed down his other gear to his nine brothers and his guild mates so they could farm normal Atziri for us.

Porter had this whole time maintained position 1 on the ladder.

I had geared myself fully, and even acquired the first level 4 enhance in the league, which is critically important for my Temp Chains and Enfeeble in map bursting.

We were ready to start mapping hard.

At this point we consolidated into a TRIO and respecced so that our auras, and builds were min maxxed to compliment eachother.

We fed all the valuable drops to our guild mates who were trading for us and using our base of 1K exalts to buy all the 78s.

We got a few windrippers, 5 voll's devotions, and many other notable drops.

We sold a few hundred exalts of GG rares.

ALL OF THIS WENT TO CONTINUING TO MONOPOLIZE 78 MAPS.

EVERY map we rolled packsize, and we added domination. EVERY MAP

As of this posting Porter is the first to 100, Woods is competing in a tight race for position two, and I am shooting to maintain lucky number seven specifically because I want my ring to be the 7th !

We achieved all the goals I outlined, with INTEGRITY.

We complied fully with all the GGG TOS.

With our great network of friends and with substantial sacrifice and effort on our own behalf we will accept our Alt-Art Demi's with pride and honor.

I hope that this transparency can enlighten the community to what legitimate play looks like.

Thanks for reading my wall of text and getting a little insight into how we play this awesome game.

I love this community and love GGG and hope POE continues to thrive and grow.

VOC

^epic post +1

Hey VOC that was well put together, But hey guys this is one of my highest characters and I haven't achieved it without the help of many guild mates and long-time friends that I have known for a long time over the leagues.

I will start by linking the bow that VOC is talking about right now

This is the reason I was able to push this far this league this bow unlocked so many potentials to me at an early time over this race, I obtained this bow through reddit's global and through reputations a guy luckily got this mods rolled and one of the guys on reddit channel knew I would kill for such a beast so he referred him to me and I literally gave up every single exalt i had on me during that day and every single item to obtain it and I had to obtain it cause I knew the potentials behind it. I was willing to grind again for a base currency just to obtain and happily the guy agreed on my offer and I got this beast. However I wouldn't have been able to do anything I have done this league without the help of so many friends! and i'm grateful and thankful to all of them!

So thank you thank you thank you thank you all for the help that you provided to me guys <3

I wouldddd like to thank some of them on this post!
Porter <3 My Canadian Mini-me!:P
Jddogg my manager <3
HVD and I consider him just as one of my brothers <3
VOC for all his singing! and entertainment! over the league! am telling you he is the next Arabian idol!
Hegemony the mighty hegemeny for all his support over the league <3
Krwynn / Kory even that he annoys me sometimesss with his demannnddddiness i still love him <3 :P
Tatwooo <3 my early league trader

so ya thank you all and thank everyone else I didn't mention! so guys in other words I wasn't alone in on this! we are working in a huge group together such a goal can't be achieved by a solo player hell even when I was doing before I met most of these guys I had the support and backup of my brothers as VOC mentioned.

And yes I am still eternal/exaling the bow for a hybrid :P

That was as informative and interesting as it was arousing.

This is how its done. But as my girl T.Swift says "Haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate"

p.s. Thanks again to everyone that helped us!

erm...

A good post but your words are wasted on those who probably won't even read it. Anyone who points fingers in this game is probably destined to not be in the top10 themselves anyway. From your post its pretty clear to anyone who didn't know that you cant get rank1 on any ladder by yourself and that's something a lot of people either don't realize or don't want to.

A very good read. Props to you guys. It is amazing how the group min/maxed the entire league. This is also a strong statement from top tier players to the haters that have no clue what's going on and left only with the choice of pointing at people RMTing.

Cheers

"

d2trust wrote:

No point of these races... [Removed by Support] The only way to be able to run 78 maps like these guys are doing is by paying cash for it since the maps just dont drop. Played this game long enough to know pretty much everything there is to know about maps....

Legit players like myself can only afford 76 maps maybe a few 77s. Once they run out will be broke in currency and will be able to run maybe 73 maps if lucky and won't gain a level in a week playing 15 hours a day... When run 10+ maps and only get 1-2 good maps in return you can never build a map pool.

Bottom line these races are complete horse shit. Top levels pay to win or have purchased Supporter packs which gives them secretly increased drop rates. Don't believe me? Check their profiles..(Top 20) 75% or more are all supporters.. Or they play with the supporters to gain the increased drop rate advantage.I've bought many maps over the years from people and 90% of them were from people who purchased supporter packs.

Just bought maps yesterday from a level 97 supporter who claimed he had 2 stash tabs of level 76 maps. How is that possible? Here's my Map 75+ Map pool

. Everyday buying maps 2-3+ times a day.

I just wanna see where it's an even playing field and then we'll see who is top level or who is top 20. I can guarantee you the top 20 wouldn't look anything like it does now..

These races are not horse shit, but your story as well as your ability to play the game obviously is

Well I guess he just confirmed that you cant substain map. You have to buy all of them, And you need hundreds of exalts. I think we can agree that only a very small amount of people can get such amount of currency, so only a small amount of people can actually chain 78s maps. Most of the people who does chain 78s are RMTer/JSPer. We just found out that there was a group of people who did collect such amount of currency without RMT but these people are extremely rare if theres some other than those 3. So i think its fair to say that most of top ladders are RMTer because you have to compete with people who has hundreds and exalts buying every single 78s they find on chat/forums.

Game is broken.