[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

Hankinsohl's tips to "I win" in the Atlas Leagues:

Step 1: Roll CA Magic Find. Follow this excellent guide. Save up currency.
Step 2: Choose a build that will absolutely crush end game content. My personal choice for this league is a build utilizing The Harvest, high life, and which abuses leech/flask mechanics.
Step 3: Use the currency you generate from MF to fund your OP build.
Step 4: Using your OP build, get 125 map completion on Atlas. Atlas completion bonus is nuts. With high completion bonus it's totally possible to sustain Tier 14+ maps *and* profit while doing so.
Step 5: Run the highest level maps you have available. Make sure to chisel/chaos for packsize and quantity. You'll drop more than enough maps to make it worth your while to do this.
Step 6: Farm Guardians/Shaper and possibly Uber Atziri.

You'll make a ton of currency this way; you'll see all the content; and it will be fun.

Good luck fellow exiles.
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For the record, I did not follow the recommendations listed above. Instead I immediately rolled triple-totem, non-crit Ancestral Warchief. Not optimal. But, I have pretty good map completion, and a nice (but not optimal) build for farming Guardians/Shapers.

My plan is to hit 40/40 challenges and then roll CA magic find along the lines of this guide and use that to fund a truly broken build - Worminator's build based on The Harvest.

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Some other thoughts:

GGG does, IMO, a very nice job at achieving balance each league. And they're getting better.

Blizzard, in World of Warcraft, by contrast, was horrible at this. Absolutely horrible.

Nonetheless, POE is extremely complex - so many builds/variants. It's invariable that GGG fails to balance some builds/mechanics.

So in each league, some builds will be awful - others will be hugely OP.

Me - I'm an average player. Maybe a bit better than average.

I totally suck at some of the dodging mechanics - Uber labs is a total pain for me.

Yet, I'm competitive. Very competitive.

And I like to think that I'm "smarter than the average bear." LOL - you may disagree.

So my plan this league (and most others) - is to accumulate currency rapidly without living in trade chat. If you love trading, you can accumulate much, much more currency just by trading nonstop than by any other means in the game - but for me, this is way too boring.

For me, Serelth's CA build is the best for wealth generation using magic find - I like Serleth's build because it's much more fun than sitting in trade chat and the build generates quite a bit of wealth - more than sufficient for my purposes.
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I personally like to do things myself. I don't like purchasing challenges that involve skill.

But I have no problems whatsoever purchasing challenges that involve RNG.

"Claim these Essences" - totally RNG. I purchased that - and got help for Serleth - thanks!

"Kill the Guardians" and "Kill Shaper" - these are skill/build based. I want to do these on my own if possible.

So, my general plan each league, after getting enough currency, is to roll something that's either totally broken OP or is at least much more powerful than other builds.

That way I can compensate for my slightly above average gameplay to complete the "skill-based" or "build-based" challenges.
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Some players simply want to achieve 40/40 each league as fast as possible, by whatever means.

ChronoDroid - who seems to have skipped this league - falls into this category. I'm in awe of how fast CD completes 40/40 each league.

I lose focus - doing lots of stuff that doesn't contribute towards challenge completion - CD, and others like him, stay focused. Everything they do goes towards challenge completion.

Yet for me, and others like me, 40/40 is still possible. Which is why POE is such a good game.