[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

Man, I remember the days of Dominus farming with no filter in 6-man parties as MF-culler.

Looking back on it now, I'm not sure how the hell I put up with it lol.

"

Godfeast_1 wrote:

done

Uhhh.

Yeah.

No life on gear. Like actually none, other than on Drillneck.

So you're probably trying to map with like... 1500 life.

You should have double that.

You've focused waaaaaaaaaaaaayyyy too much on trying to get the MF portion of things working without balancing the survivability portion of it.

Adding IIR comes after you've got the build at least somewhat structured around defense.

This means: replacing your gloves, belt, helmet, amulet, and rings with life and resistances, and add IIR if you can, and getting some other 5L as well with life and resistances on it, but at the very least something NON-corrupted so you can alteration-craft life. A 5L chest isn't really necessary though, so you can pick up a life + dual/tri-res chest for dirt cheap and worry about 5L'ing it later while settling for 4Ling it in the interim.

And like I suspected, no seething life flasks. Those are NECESSARY imho for the build to have at least two of them because there's no leech, the regen is sucked up by Blood Rage, etc., so the defense side of the build is pretty much evasion, manually dodging stuff, and instant heal flasks.

You could get away with keeping the helmet for now, because that is nice IIR, if you swapped to a rare chest with life but honestly just getting bits of IIR here and there to start is fine, you don't have to go full tilt. A life helmet with resistances and even 12% IIR is better than a 44% IIR helmet with nothing else on it. Worry about piecemeal upgrading more IIR into the build after your defense is sorted.

Tree looks fine for your level, though, so it's pretty much just a gearing issue.

Hi, thanks for the guide, I finally got my gems to level 20 and 7 of them are CA, just wanted to know how important the quality on CA is before I vaal them as 20x7 gcp can be quite expensive or is it possibly worth it to level all but 1 of them again with gem recipe.

Also I am running a mana flask instead of clarity and the 4 mana nodes and never had any issues with mana, is the extra life flask and passive mana regen that much better than having 4 extra skill points?

Hey Serleth have you considered goin Full IIQ/IIR gear and farm low tier maps for chaos recipes? And what is your approach on farming with MF build, as in what maps you would prefer to run and whats your goal farming in general? At certain point its hard to progress in red maps with Andvarius and im not sure its worth it, while you can safely farm low tier maps as long as your bow is decent, and then possibly switch to DPS oriented gear to do red maps etc.

"

Nvrmd wrote:

Hi, thanks for the guide, I finally got my gems to level 20 and 7 of them are CA, just wanted to know how important the quality on CA is before I vaal them as 20x7 gcp can be quite expensive or is it possibly worth it to level all but 1 of them again with gem recipe.

Also I am running a mana flask instead of clarity and the 4 mana nodes and never had any issues with mana, is the extra life flask and passive mana regen that much better than having 4 extra skill points?

Quality is far less important than gem level. Go for 21/0 first, then 21/20.

If you prefer flasks and would rather put the passive points elsewhere, that's fine, but I prefer running two quicksilvers and a third, longer duration life flask for boss fights for when I don't feel I need to panic and spam.

The central reason behind clarity with mana flows + soul siphon is for reduced recovery maps. It negates the need to swap to a mana flask for any map roll OTHER than no regen.

Just a QoL decision more than anything to make alc-and-go a bit easier.

"

KostoLev wrote:

Hey Serleth have you considered goin Full IIQ/IIR gear and farm low tier maps for chaos recipes? And what is your approach on farming with MF build, as in what maps you would prefer to run and whats your goal farming in general? At certain point its hard to progress in red maps with Andvarius and im not sure its worth it, while you can safely farm low tier maps as long as your bow is decent, and then possibly switch to DPS oriented gear to do red maps etc.

Yes, and in my opinion running higher level maps is more beneficial than looking to pure chaos recipe farm. If you're running low-tier maps (namely, T1-3) specifically to chaos farm, you're going to get a lot less items worth selling and your currency generation is going to largely rely on the recipe and some alt farming, with the occasional good unique drop.

The moment you hit T4 maps, you're going to be iding all accessories and armours because magic mobs will drop ilvl 72 gear, where the second-highest resistance affix becomes available, and at that point NOT iding gear could result in you vendoring valuable items.

Anything less than ilvl 72 gear after the first couple weeks will pretty much just not sell for much, as people are at that point looking to min-max gear.

(NOTE: This is different in hardcore, where people are constantly rerolling and things that would be vendor food in SC will still sell in HC).

In my opinion, once you have a finished build (CA 21, Empower 3, +3 bow), red tier maps T11-13 shouldn't be much of an issue.

To answer what maps I prefer to run, I look for a combination of speed and affix availability. Given that some of the better attack mods (namely, attack speed) begin at ilvl 77, I like to farm T8 (75) to T11 (78) maps. This allows me to farm tiers that don't really slow the build down, while giving me good access to item drops.

Hi,

I want to thank you for such an enjoyable build.

-Kit

Thanks Kit!

I went ahead and blew my savings on this, my first build in years.

I was a little Leary at first, but just getting flasks like you recommend has Completely rectified the 3 shot boss Gibs and harbringer packs are a joke.

Followed through with as much as I could and just spent my savings rather than back track on gear (10c for lasts was nothing, but 2ex for rest kind of hurt,lol) and I'm OK for now until I use another andvarius.

If you have a sec to look, with 2.8k health, 200ish es, only able to use grace aura atm (too low max mana), +2 gem bow, good resists, and 6.5 k evasion:


1. What tier maps do you think I can push safely (still levelling since I'm only 70) - would any t5 be easy enough in your opinion?

2. I have just over an ex left. What would be the next best upgrade for me? I can't decide between +3 bow for the extra ca level(easiest upgrade), or trying to obtain a 6l chest that can it my level 2 Empower in (costlier, may require another bow to do for swapping gems into but might allow 2nd aura too), or perhaps something I'm missing all together?

I've noticed that I'm not one shooting packs now with the changes but they do die after the second to third dot tick. Is this normal for ca as you move into the final build/ gear arena?

Also, have never been able to fit in golem or blink arrow. How do these fit into play style and how important are they?

Ty

Edit- I just reread the bit about not doing gear checks. Sry. Could you answer the other questions though?

"

Godfeast_1 wrote:

1. What tier maps do you think I can push safely (still levelling since I'm only 70) - would any t5 be easy enough in your opinion?

2. I have just over an ex left. What would be the next best upgrade for me? I can't decide between +3 bow for the extra ca level(easiest upgrade), or trying to obtain a 6l chest that can it my level 2 Empower in (costlier, may require another bow to do for swapping gems into but might allow 2nd aura too), or perhaps something I'm missing all together?

I've noticed that I'm not one shooting packs now with the changes but they do die after the second to third dot tick. Is this normal for ca as you move into the final build/ gear arena?

Also, have never been able to fit in golem or blink arrow. How do these fit into play style and how important are they?

I'll make a gear-check exception here because you have a significant problem with your CA gem placement. But I'll address things in order.

1. At 2.8k life, 5 might be questionable, but doable.

2. Change Sadima for rare gloves with life and res (preferably also a bit of IIR). Without the IIR roll you should be able to get a dual res pair of gloves for a couple chaos. Same deal for a rare leather belt with dual res. This will allow you to (at least) go to a gold-ring base in your right slot with life and some IIR in the interim until you can get upgrades for everything else like jewels etc. to put in the second Andvarius.

****Your CA setup NEEDS to be in your bow.**** Not your chest. Change that out immediately. The cloud damage scales with gem level. +2 bow gems is useless if your bow gem is not in the bow. Hence it reads, "+2 to level of socketed bow gems"

To that end, do not 6L your chest. Get a +3 bow, 5L it, then start saving to 6L it.

Enhance it not required, at all. It's one of the least profitable of the three E's (Empower, Enhance, Enlighten). Remove that, put Blink Arrow in its place. That is important to have.

Golem is not. Golem's just a nice extra thing to cast for some extra dps for tankier mobs but it isn't required.

You should be able to run a low-level Clarity as well, but given that you're running a 5L ED setup, it's less important to worry about trying to fit in. Grace on its own is fine. If you did want to run a Clarity, you would run a 3+1L glove slot (Wither, Spell Totem, Faster Casting, then Clarity in its own un-linked slot).

You will eventually pretty much one-shot white mobs and most blue mobs. This will start to occur probably once you fix putting your CA gem in your bow, and maybe get another gem level.

I can't seem to run maps with "Players cannot regenerate life, mana or energy shield". Am I doing something wrong? My mana doesn't regenerate from clarity.