[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

If you really want to, yeah, you could just do the loop now and maybe make up for some of the damage with jewel slots, but if you don't have any jewels prepared or the currency to be able to go get some, I would recommend going for Method first.

The following is the net respec points you get from questing:

* 2 from Fetid x 3
* 2 from Golden Hand x 3
* 2 from Busts * 3
* 2 from Deshret's Spirit * 3

= 24 points total.

If you pick up Method first, THEN complete the loop through Herbalism, you will only need to use 9 of those points to spec out of Method and the travel points.

The net result is slower access to everything else, but once you complete the loop (which should be right before you start mapping): blam, you get 9 points to throw into a lot of different stuff.

That's how I did it anyway. Alternately you could just loop first, then frenzy charges to make up for the damage.

Either way is completely acceptable and more or less just depends on whether you have the CoH + Frenzy 4L setup done or not.
Jul 27, 2011 - Sept 30, 2018.
I'm completely lost on this whole thread and your display of the Caustic Arrow solo map MFer build. There are too many different types of skill trees and items in your gear don't match what you're saying and the list of leveling on what people should select first doesn't show in the skill tree. I'm just completely confused on this build. I tried into it for awhile and got as far as Cruel Act 3. I just can't do it. I'm lost with the whole mechanics of it...
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MisterSinister8 wrote:
I'm completely lost on this whole thread and your display of the Caustic Arrow solo map MFer build. There are too many different types of skill trees and items in your gear don't match what you're saying and the list of leveling on what people should select first doesn't show in the skill tree. I'm just completely confused on this build. I tried into it for awhile and got as far as Cruel Act 3. I just can't do it. I'm lost with the whole mechanics of it...


I've already left a giant warning that the levelling section is out of date. A lot of people show up here knowing what they're doing and can adjust on the fly, so I haven't removed it.

If you want to avoid confusion on the trees, just do the first spoiler. 2.1 level 95.

The gear section is literally just for gear. It's not for gems ("items in your gear???"). You should only be looking at the gear section quite literally for the gear.

For gem slots, that's what the gems spoiler is for.

As for "lost with the mechanics"... it's all there in the guide. You're only the second person in almost 300 pages to express confusion with the writeup, so I'm pretty confident that it isn't confusing, but rather you're just struggling to understand it. Which is fine.

That's why I monitor this thread at least twice a day so that I can help people out who do end up getting confused. It's understandable, I go into a breathtaking amount of detail in certain sections and, admittedly, I'm behind on doing some cleanup work on it, including the levelling section. There's a lot of other games, and life, that are taking up my time at the moment and I just haven't got around to it.

Anyway, point being.

If you want to give it another go, let me know exactly what you're struggling with and I'll be glad to help you out.
Jul 27, 2011 - Sept 30, 2018.
"
Serleth wrote:
If you really want to, yeah, you could just do the loop now and maybe make up for some of the damage with jewel slots, but if you don't have any jewels prepared or the currency to be able to go get some, I would recommend going for Method first.


Yeah, I'll grab method. Already went this way might as well. After I get method/entropy/dirty techniques/growth and decay where should I head to? 4 skill points would give me two frenzy charges.

I won't swap over to the right side and acrobatics until I can at least afford all 3 frenzy passives, no rush if I grab method anyways. Probably swap like this:https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwIBAF4A7gMeBS0FtQguDkgRLxNtFAkUdRUgFr8Y2xmOGbQbyB9BI_YknSaIJpUqTSzpLYMuIzB8NZI2PT7PPydDMUd-SshNklFHVUtVhVoaW69h4mJaYqxlTWyMbmluqnTtdct2gn11hNmGs419jX6Nv5AKk5mbjZ2qo4qly7TFtNG1SLXytzC3trueu-O9Nr3mvqfC7MMzxKLIDMu9037UI9X42L3awd0N4tXjhOaB6mLrY-2D7g7vevaj_ro=.

I'm not sure what mister's deal with the guide is, even following the outdated leveling build I just bought a deaths harp and had a quick look at a 2.1 split shot guide. Easy even for someone who hasn't played path in a long time. Kind of just assumed you'd respec later on, otherwise the passives are pretty self explanatory. Maybe post a a leveling build that shows the old progression up past method and explain that you have to respec at higher level? Might save some confusion, threw me off a tiny bit at first I guess.

Thanks again for the awesome guide and answering all my questions, I'm pretty rusty it's nice to have guidance.

Edit: Which gems should I level in the offhand? Might as well get some gems ready for the gcp recipe.
Last edited by xSJx#0516 on Jan 17, 2016, 8:15:09 AM
Hi. Very nice Guide, played it in the last season too. Actually i have a problem. My char(knusbrick) has nearly the def-stats than my old char (FarmItUp)- FarmItUp can run T10 maps, knusbrick got very hard problems running t3 maps....i dont know where the problem is. Can anyone help me?

link to my charakters: https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/ententrainor/characters

ps: The Skill-tree is changed a bit by me.

Thank you very much and sorry for the bad english

ententrainor
"
xSJx wrote:
Edit: Which gems should I level in the offhand? Might as well get some gems ready for the gcp recipe.


This build heavily benefits from a corrupted level 21 Caustic Arrow, I'd suggest to levelup as many Caustic Arrow gems as you can by putting them onto unused sockets and offhand sockets

To expand on this topic:
I'm wondering what the best strategy in terms of corrupting CA gems is. Ignore the quality and vaal them at 20/0, meaning you double your chances because it takes only half the time to level them to 20/0 instead of 20/20? Is it worth gcp'ing them up to 20/20 before you corrupt them? I'm going with leveling them all the way up to 20/20 right now, mainly because I don't use AoE gem and rely on Carcass Jack, CA quality and Rigwald's Fork instead. How are you guys handling this? Do you even bother with 21 CA in a temp league?



"
ententrainor wrote:
Hi. Very nice Guide, played it in the last season too. Actually i have a problem. My char(knusbrick) has nearly the def-stats than my old char (FarmItUp)- FarmItUp can run T10 maps, knusbrick got very hard problems running t3 maps....i dont know where the problem is. Can anyone help me?

link to my charakters: https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/ententrainor/characters

ps: The Skill-tree is changed a bit by me.

Thank you very much and sorry for the bad english

ententrainor


I don't see that much difference between your 2 characters to be honest. Do you feel weak in terms of defense or rather in terms of clearspeed/dps?
From looking at your setup, I felt like you might benefit from the increased AoE Gem instead of one of your damage gems more, your clearspeed probably suffers from the small AoE a lot.
In terms of defense: your choice of gear seems to have really low evasion. I' dont know if you are running grace or purity of elements, but without grace you hardly got 1k pure evasion which is really low and you miss out on the benefit of your big "+% increased evasion" multiplier from passive tree and DEX. When I leveled up my character I felt a lot safer when I upgraded my gear to be more evasion based (got rid off sadimas and bought a high evasion chest) and switched from Purity to grace, skyrocketing my evasion from 6k to 20+k.
Hello again Serleth!

Just got back from an half a year break and wanted to try this out again, last time was start of warbands. Would u say it is still wonderful for solo MF? Since the leveling section is out of date and so am I atm, what would u recommend me leveling as? And I guess the switch to CA is at +2 bow.

Also since I suck at what to take first on the tree, a 20points>40points>60points>80points>final build tree would be awesome!

If ya want I can help you with some nice picture and a better/cleaner write-up of the build once I tested it and PM it to you or something if ya want lol. Anyway, thanks in advance!
"
comoestoy wrote:



"
ententrainor wrote:
Hi. Very nice Guide, played it in the last season too. Actually i have a problem. My char(knusbrick) has nearly the def-stats than my old char (FarmItUp)- FarmItUp can run T10 maps, knusbrick got very hard problems running t3 maps....i dont know where the problem is. Can anyone help me?

link to my charakters: https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/ententrainor/characters

ps: The Skill-tree is changed a bit by me.

Thank you very much and sorry for the bad english

ententrainor


I don't see that much difference between your 2 characters to be honest. Do you feel weak in terms of defense or rather in terms of clearspeed/dps?
From looking at your setup, I felt like you might benefit from the increased AoE Gem instead of one of your damage gems more, your clearspeed probably suffers from the small AoE a lot.
In terms of defense: your choice of gear seems to have really low evasion. I' dont know if you are running grace or purity of elements, but without grace you hardly got 1k pure evasion which is really low and you miss out on the benefit of your big "+% increased evasion" multiplier from passive tree and DEX. When I leveled up my character I felt a lot safer when I upgraded my gear to be more evasion based (got rid off sadimas and bought a high evasion chest) and switched from Purity to grace, skyrocketing my evasion from 6k to 20+k.


Hi, thank you for your answer. The problem is only the defense, dps/clearspeed is okay for the level of gems. And there is not a real difference to the def of my old char - because of this fact, i am wondering why i am so damn weak - and this in the early game :D Of course, i can bring my evasion up...but this isn't solving the problem about the gameplay-differences between the 2 chars. But thank you for the idea, for the first i will change my chest with a high-ev-chest.
@xSJx

Offhands, until you have a 21/20, should all be spare Caustic Arrows.

The way that I handle this, to also answer your question comoestoy, at the start of the league I simply level to 20 and corrupt to 21. Damage is more important than quality, even without Carcass Jack. The AoE is manageable without the extra 10% off quality.

After I have a 21/0, I repeat the process, this time levelling to 20, gcp recipe to 1/20%, and then 20/20 corruptions for 21/20.

@ententrainor: my best guess is that you went for Written in Blood instead of Scion life. Point for point, you will end up with less life and damage heading that route than you would heading for the three jewel sockets you can grab by going Scion (iirc, been a while since I did the tree analysis on it and I don't have time right now to go through it again). Although, you should still be fine taking that route, tbh.

Anyway, other than that the only thing I can think of is there's something different you're doing playstyle wise, in terms of why you find one squishier than the other.

The big problem is your flasks, though. Rotgot benefits this build exactly 0 ways. We don't need Onslaught, since firing faster just increases AoE, not actual damage dealt, as the clouds do not stack.

What you need (non-negotiable) is two Hallowed Seething life flasks. This allows you to instant heal out of near-rip situations. Because we don't get a lot of evasion on gear in general, long-heal flasks are not good for this build. We don't have enough eva to get hit once or twice, dodge the rest, and let long-heal flask get us out of it.

Fix your flasks, and you'll find those troublesome situations become laughable.

Once you have Soul Siphon (1 more point), you can drop your mana flask, run two Seething, one Catalyzed, and two quicksilvers (which will help with GTFO'ing out of tough situations, as well: you'll never be caught without a quicksilver charge).

Hope that helps.

@Decibel

I don't have time right now to give you a full process, but basically:

Finesse, Heart of Oak, up to Shadow life, thru Entropy, up to Blood Drinker, Growth of Decay, Method to the Madness, the entire Duelist section (starting with Dirty Techniques, then Master of Arena, Fury Bolts, Golem's Blood), Scion Life, finish the right-side loop by going through Herbalism, remove Method to the Madness for frenzy charges/jewel slots, then polish the rest of the tree off.

Basically in that order.

Also, grab a Searing Bond the moment you can use it. Makes levelling a joke.
Jul 27, 2011 - Sept 30, 2018.
Last edited by Serleth#4392 on Jan 17, 2016, 1:36:36 PM
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iDecibel wrote:

Also since I suck at what to take first on the tree, a 20points>40points>60points>80points>final build tree would be awesome!

Hi iDecibel:
As you know, what's strongest for leveling changes from league-to-league. GGG adjusts overpowered skills each league so you'll need to be flexible.

In Talisman, this
with a flame totem in the socket, along with fire trap, and searing bond as Serleth suggests is OP.

For fastest leveling, you'll want to stay several levels below the area level. You'll still gain maximum experience points when your level + 3 + (floor (your level/16)) is equal to the area level.

What this means is that you should run past mobs if you are over-leveled per the above equation. You will want to equip 2 quicksilver flasks and will need movement speed boots for fastest leveling; also, don't equip a chest piece or shield until necessary - equipping either of these incurs a movement speed penalty (it's OK to equip a chest piece and shield when fighting early bosses if you need to; just unequip them afterwards if you can afford to do so); but at merciless for sure, and likely quite a bit earlier you'll want a shield and chest just to survive.

RaizQT has several youtube videoes where he goes into depth about how to level as fast as possible - check them out and follow his advise.

If you have access to a Tabula Rasa early on, you can 6-link just about anything and cruise through to Dried Lake Merciless.

Otherwise, Dual Totems or Flame Totem in Black Maw along with Searing Bond and FIre Trap and whatever you like is fine.

I'm not sure where you should switch to CA; Serleth can help with that.

If you simply want levels, Dried Lake until level 80 is fastest.

But if you want to accumulate gear and build up magic find, it's probably better to start maps as soon as you can - after all, your magic find is multiplicative with map magic find.
Last edited by hankinsohl#1231 on Jan 17, 2016, 4:58:02 PM

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