[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

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grimjack68 wrote:

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TurtlesCanFIy wrote:

Level 88 now in Hardcore and tier 8-9 maps are still horrifying to run. I'm able to clear all whites/blues/rares without too much trouble but boss burst damage has probably rendered me infertile out of fear. Even without any mods that add damage I'm still basically left with prayer and immortal call+cwdt as my mitigation from a swift death by Tunneltrap or some other boss. Is this normal?
Also feels like I'm unable to fill out my life to 5k, even with pretty decent gear.
It's hard clearing maps and making money when every single map feels like the final sentence in a suicide note.

Your toons aren't visible, so we can't check gear / tree / jewels.

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Serleth wrote:

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grimjack68 wrote:

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TurtlesCanFIy wrote:

Level 88 now in Hardcore and tier 8-9 maps are still horrifying to run. I'm able to clear all whites/blues/rares without too much trouble but boss burst damage has probably rendered me infertile out of fear. Even without any mods that add damage I'm still basically left with prayer and immortal call+cwdt as my mitigation from a swift death by Tunneltrap or some other boss. Is this normal?
Also feels like I'm unable to fill out my life to 5k, even with pretty decent gear.
It's hard clearing maps and making money when every single map feels like the final sentence in a suicide note.

Your toons aren't visible, so we can't check gear / tree / jewels.

Honestly I'm more flattered at this point that the dude has five posts in four years, and one of them is on this thread :$

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Serleth wrote:

Oh okay, you've gone MoM.

Although I am a little bit perplexed. I end up with 207% life after jewels and 5300 life, whereas you already have 198% and you're sitting at 4900. The five or so missing levels would only let you an addition 150 or so? I think the difference largely comes down to me not using Carcass in my CA builds, I go with a 100+ life rare chest, which nets me about another 150 or so as well.

Anyway, you're MoM and you're probably dealing with... I'm guessing 600 or so unreserved mana? That's giving you an eHP of 5400 or so. Then I'm guessing you have about another 600 ES, putting you at 6000 eHP after Acrobatics.

In all honesty, I don't think you're that bad off here.

But reserving that much mana and only having 600 for MoM isn't reallllllly doing you favours.

Try dropping Grace to put you at 1450-ish unreserved mana, test it out in low level maps, slowly work your way back up, and see how you feel.

For HC players, if you're feeling that uncomfortable with that much eHP, I recommend dropping some MF. Remove an Andvarius for a survival ring, or get a decently rolled Ventor's (preferably 5% or better IIQ, 35%+ IIR) or just straight up go for a gold ring with 35%+ explicit rarity and a 70+ life roll. That will give you an additional 210 life and take some of the pressure off.

Another level and that jewel socket for an additional 5-7% life will also help out.

At the end of the day though, this is an MF build, and your goal (especially in HC) shouldn't really be concerned with pushing high tier maps while going full-tilt MF. You don't really need to run much higher than T7-8 to take advantage of good affixes. Run maps with bosses you know you can handle, and if you run out of maps in a given tier with said bosses, drop down. Just try to not drop down below T4s (resistance affix threshold for ilvl 72).

Lastly, feel free to drop a Quicksilver for a Stibnite.

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Serleth wrote:

I recently tried leveling as CA again from scratch. Make no mistake about it, it's not as fast as other leveling.

It was a pain until I had about... 130% damage off the tree. I was using a 5L Silverbranch for the +1 bow gems. I was using it to level my current ranger, so the order of nodes I got will be different than you but just for illustration if you wanted to PoB the numbers yourself, I got Method to the Madness, Entropy and the ranger starting proj damage nodes, which I think was somewhere between level 20 and 30. Then it started to feel okay. Once I also had Growth and Decay, it started to smooth out.

From Scion, since Dirty Techniques no longer helps us out, the trek is longer. Fury Bolts + Method + Entropy, which is probably mid-40s or so.

If you have the currency, get a corrupted Empower 3 and use that as your 6th link.

It's worth noting I did have to grind areas to roughly keep equal to zone level in order for CA to feel comfortable. Until I hit 51 and was able to swap into a +2 bow. Then I cranked my way to Blood Aqueducts pretty smoothly.

I personally always just recommend Firestorm leveling or something like that.

Anyway, once you get Entropy next, it'll start to feel better. From there go directly to Growth & Decay, picking up Blood Siphon if you need more life, then Written in Blood into Atrophy, then start fleshing out the rest.

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educed Caustic Arrow's impact on graphical performance, with a variety of optimisations.