[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

3/4 on Shaper kills. First two sets, went down to the last portal + ripped one until I realized that despite how close Slower Proj gets you to the target, it's not close enough to be classified as the "melee" range that prevents him from launching the huge orbs at you. You have to sit right on top of him.

Next two runs were 1 death + deathless.

Way over-nerfed IMO. I would like to have seen them remain as was and make them even rarer as necessary.

In Breech League, time is of the essence - you need to be speed clearing maps. In Breach especially, essences are now in the category of "always skip." Too bad, because I thought they were fun.

What?

"

• The values of mods from Wailing Essences of Woe and above have been reduced, resulting in a notably lower value of all mods from higher-tier Woe essences.
• Fixed a minor issue where the Muttering Essence of Woe amulet mod granted values that were 1% too low.
• The gloves mod from Essence of Insanity now grant "Socketed gems have 16% More Attack and Cast Speed" (down from 20%). Existing items will not be changed.
• The weapon mod from Essence of Horror now grants a 16% chance to gain a power, frenzy or endurance charge on kill (up from 10%). Old versions of this mod can be updated using a Divine Orb.
The weapon mod from Essence of Delirium now deals 750 chaos damage per second for 10 seconds (down from 1,000).[/li]

These are not terribly significant nerfs. Still worth getting, imho, so I'd like an explanation as to why you think they're skip-mode, precisely?

Am I misunderstanding something or do you think these four changes were enough to render them useless?

It used be great to get deafening and craft really worthwhile gear in a few tries. Now, you're better off chaos spamming.

Low tier essences serve a niche roll while leveling - but I no longer use essences to craft end-game gear.

Meanwhile, if you spend time to do the essences (open it, kill it, loot it, vendor it, etc.), you'd have been better off skipping them altogether - save for the possibility that the mobs might drop something useful - more below (low level essences do have niche uses per above, but then the niche wasn't affected by the nerf).

E.g., Deafening Essence of Woe - now crafts a T2-ish energy shield value, at a cost of 18c (BSC price on poe.trade). I'd rather spend 18c spamming then on the Woe. And getting enough essences for the Deafening will take forever - should you get them, I'd advise selling.

What was cool about the essences is that it could give a guaranteed stat better than otherwise attainable. And for that, it would be worthwhile pursuing - at least for min-maxers.

Now...? I guess you could collect essences, but it really doesn't seem worthwhile to me.
========
I suppose my main complaint is that essences used to offer a chance, albeit really small, of crafting the best gear in the game. Now, they're marginally useful - useful while leveling and at least you can sell them if you want - and have lost the "wow" factor.

I guess the essence mobs can drop stuff (can they drop maps?) - so it might be useful to kill them if you can just for that reason and grab the essences just because they're not entirely worthless having gone through the trouble of killing the guardian mobs.
=========
At my current level of DPS (it's good, but I have a long ways to go), Essence guardians offer a not-insignificant risk of death - and the reward, such as it is, is very slight. So I skip all of them.

Once my DPS picks up and I can kill them without thinking, I'll probably start killing Essence mobs just because it posses no risk and eventually I can collect enough essences to sell.
====
Edit - It looks like some of the essences weren't changed, at least insofar as I can tell. Contempt, for example seems to be unaltered - and it still provides a slightly higher flat physical roll than is otherwise available.

So, I guess I'm confused - either the POE wiki's haven't been updated, or, some of the high-level essences were unchanged. If the later, at least for the unaffected essences, essences are definitely still worth while. Beats me what's what though, LOL.

I was reading the change as affecting all high level essences. Doh!

But man, those Woe essences are overpriced. Just sell any you get. Chaos/spam or alt/aug is much cheaper and may yield better results. For example, you can alt any stat for body armor with equal probability resulting in a expectation of about 36 tries to get a particular stat. But that's with alt/auging. Chaos spam gets you three tries (about) each time, so far more likely. And you can chaos spam T1 which is better than the essence. I haven't done the math, but I'd expect the value of a Deafening Essence should be about 15c or so given the alternative of chaos spam.

Anyhow, my essence avoidance was based on a mis-reading of the patch notes - I thought that all high level essences were nerfed and the one I looked at - Woe - was indeed nerfed. Woe is worthwhile selling (way overpriced) but I'd never use them except for low-level crafting (but do we need ES at low levels?).

"

Anyhow, my essence avoidance was based on a mis-reading of the patch notes - I thought that all high level essences were nerfed and the one I looked at - Woe - was indeed nerfed. Woe is worthwhile selling (way overpriced) but I'd never use them except for low-level crafting (but do we need ES at low levels?).

Oops, lol.

Yeah I agree, either alt/regal or chaos spam is more worthwhile. Like you can get super lucky with Woe and get something amazing but for the amount that you'll have to invest per Shrieking+ Essence, pretty much not worthwhile unless you're just looking to get something decent to start with.

That said, these gloves came from Deafening Essence of Spite =)

I answered Hank in-game but I'll add the info here.

This is my HoWA Gear and here's a link to the tree I'm using, for anyone interested.



Hideout with Wrath, Discipline and no golem up (so, no other buffs than Wrath/Disc):

GMP DPS - 40,710
ES - 10,308

Almost deathless'd Uber Atziri but I belatedly realized my flasks weren't configured correctly. I'm running a Basalt Flask for my Dispel Bleed, which only gives me one use in the fight unless she goes into the healing phase. That should be switched out for a Ruby or Topaz flask.

I also would switch out my Stibnite for Topaz/Ruby with dispel ignite.

Otherwise, the Uber Atziri fight is actually really easy with HoWA as long as you're familiar with how the series of fights in general go (Double Vaal, the Demonic Trio, etc). I pretty much faced down the tentacle miscreation, dodged the rain once, and then dual striker and cycloner were just facemoded.

Uber Atziri herself wasn't much of a threat except for not having multiple staunching charges. My lone rip was due to the fact that I bled down to 1k ES and then got immediately speared again afterwards in the split phase without time to leech back to full ES.

The Shaper fight is much more difficult but once you adjust to the mechanics, know how to position in order to avoid his Void Cascade (as I call it, it's the golden ball spam) and manage the Vortex ball positioning, he's not that bad either with the values I have listed above.

Update for Hall of Grandmasters:

HoWA can run it, too. Although it'd probably get fucked by Mull Gubbin. Maybe Frost Bomb would help vs him.

Requires Block Chance Reduction gem and dispel freeze / bleed flasks.

Officially done all the content this game has to offer.

Nice to know that HoWA is viable for HoTGM too.

Your gear is pretty nice - it looks to be the least expensive way to go, i.e., get accuracy on rings instead of helm/gloves.

Trouble is, so few - if any - suitable helm/gloves exist ATM in BSC - I'm looking for 51+ int, good ES and either 2 resists or 1 resist with an open affix to craft the 2nd.
==
I'm going to be switching my ES-heavy tree sometime next week as I complete my gear. I'll likely grab the lightning damage half-wheel as you did.

I'm using faster attacks in my links, and with Ancestral Protector's "more attack speed" - current 19 for me - attack speed is crazy good. I get a 20% DPS buff with the totem down. In my final tree I'll grab the dual wield attack speed nodes culminating in Dark Arts - boosted by AP, these nodes should be super good.

"

hankinsohl wrote:

RE HoWA

Nice to know that HoWA is viable for HoTGM too.

Your gear is pretty nice - it looks to be the least expensive way to go, i.e., get accuracy on rings instead of helm/gloves.

Trouble is, so few - if any - suitable helm/gloves exist ATM in BSC - I'm looking for 51+ int, good ES and either 2 resists or 1 resist with an open affix to craft the 2nd.
==
I'm going to be switching my ES-heavy tree sometime next week as I complete my gear. I'll likely grab the lightning damage half-wheel as you did.

I'm using faster attacks in my links, and with Ancestral Protector's "more attack speed" - current 19 for me - attack speed is crazy good. I get a 20% DPS buff with the totem down. In my final tree I'll grab the dual wield attack speed nodes culminating in Dark Arts - boosted by AP, these nodes should be super good.

I'm level 93 now, not sure how much farther I'll be pushing it. AP would be nice for more consistent APS boost instead of having to rely on souls for Vaal Haste, so I think I might make that switch.

Only problem is the totems survivability in situations where you'd really need it. Namely, Uber Atziri, Shaper.

The kinda int values you're looking for are what's restriction your pool of available gear. Drop it down to 35-40 min to open up the door for you. Like you can see in my gear, I don't really have amazing int rolls on anything aside from the gloves and boots. I'm averaging 36.8 int per slot, if you disclude the amulet. More than enough.

If you can hit 35-40 average, for a reasonable price you'll be sailing. I'd guess a range of anywhere between 2-3ex for dual res in that general vicinity. Which you can honestly probably just chaos yourself, as we were talkin' earlier. =)

Personally, I think more up-front damage beats out scaling attack speed. Easier on mana, one-shots most white packs in T15 maps, frenzy scaling provides most of the IAS you'll need. Especially if you're going to be dropping the AP totem down for the bonus when you need it, probably more important to be able to chip down tankier targets a bit faster with raw damage output rather than sitting and throwing more.

That's just theory though, not sure how it'll work in practice. Lemme know how it works for ya.

At this point, my tree basically just needs Force of Nature and the top left 4/4 ele jewel socket cluster. If I was going to min-max it defensively I'd just upgrade the crap outta my gear.