[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

"

Piros wrote:

"

frky wrote:

"

openallhours wrote:

Having fun with this build finally got the quiver this afternoon.

I did spend a lot of hours with this build in the last 4 weeks. Regarding to my experience item quantity is more "important" than item rarity. Maybe important is the wrong word. But +30 % in IIQ (Over 60 % instead of ~30%) had a bigger impact than having 100 % more IIR. I personaly would drop an Andvarius for a Ventor's Gamble and the Gloves for a pair of Sadmias Touch. Furthermore i used a Divination Distillate. That gave me a total of 62 % IIQ and over 270 % IIR without having IIR on the Helmet.

From what I can remember, investing heavily into the build back in 2.2... the differences you mentioned are a matter of how much people want to spend on the build... I dunno what the pricing looks like these days, but a good Ventor's back then cost me 1-1.5ex, and might require some other regearing... and I think there is a chart that shows that there is very little gain... but that depends how much you are picking up and how much time you are spending vendoring, and how efficient you are at it...

In my mind, the advantage to IIQ is more straight currency, and maybe less focus on vendoring...

Then just drop the Vendor. You will have over 50 % IIQ without it. IIQ don't just have an effect on currency. Although you will find more items in general. This means more jewelry and belts, too. So you will find more for chaos recipe. The Vendor would be just the cherry on the cake. Sadmias, Goldwrym & Divionation Destillate would be more than enough and should be buyable for a few chaos.

Hi Serleth :)

Again, I will replay your build in this league (As for all the leagues since its launch :))

Glad to see that after all the time you keep updating it and answering questions!

Thank you for all those who have not thank you yet!


My gear for this league:



I save for CA 21 and Empower 4!

Glad to see you're still having fun with it, Vick!

x

I'd like a little help in figuring out some gear and support gem options for some specific farming in Standard league.

When sorting Legacy maps in preperation running or vending, I noticed I have 70 Spider Forest maps. I assume The Doctor still drops in this map, and would like to run these with an eye towards Divination Card Farming.

So the question is what would be the best gear and gem set up for the above goal? ~~OR~~ How do I go about solving for this on my own, is it going to be more math based or on feel?



Thanks in advance to anyone with math help or suggestions in this inquiry.

The short version is that divination cards are treated as currency, therefore their frequency is affected by IIQ, therefore stack as much IIQ as possible.

How you go about doing that is up to you in terms of trying to balance out resistances, etc., but if you really want to just go ham with it and to the dogs with IIR, you fit IIQ onto every slot possible.

This means:

* Bisco's
* Dual Ventor's
* Sadima's
* Goldwyrm
* Perandus Blazon
* Greed's Embrace
* 20/20 IIQ gem

This doesn't really leave you with room for resistances aside from jewels, quiver and helmet slots, and your life will be poo poo.

My own recommendation is to strike a balance, of course, by eliminating the lowest IIQ values on those pieces of gear and subbing in life/res gear.

Given that Greed's Embrace is -res, that'd be the first piece I drop, followed swiftly by Perandus Blazon. At non legacy values, and presuming you don't pay out the nose for legacy IIQ rares, this only reduces your total possible IIQ by a maximum of 23%.

High rolled belt, quiver and chest slots (minimum 30 resistance across the board) will get you roughly between 90-100/135, and good Ventor's (8%+ IIQ with 10% res minimum each) will get you to 110-120/135.

The rest can be sorted by jewels.

This will leave you with 15% off Sadimas, min 8/8% off dual Ventor's (ideally), 30% off your legacy Goldwyrm and 44% off a 21/20 IIQ for a net total 105% quant before the presumably 95%+ from normal enemies via Bisco's.

Also, Bisco's in Standard is cheap (1ex) at the moment, so that won't be anywhere near as bad a dent as you may have anticipated.

So, your only issue is finding a couple decent Ventor's, really, and if you aren't concerned at all about anything more than a positive rarity roll, positive resistances, and 8%+ IIQ, shouldn't cost you more than 1-4 exalt (according to this search) each, presuming those listings aren't predominantly people online in Abyss but unwilling to swap to Standard.

If you did want to add even more IIQ, I would keep a rare belt and get a max rolled Greed's Embrace. Would make resistances more difficult, but it's the highest IIQ value out of the remaining two pieces, even a legacy Perandus (which caps at 12%). Then go for extremely well rolled belt/quiver slots, resistance jewels, or accept that you won't be at max res.

Alright, settling on 104iq/100ir for now(not including the Bisco's numbers). Rarity might go up if I switch out my helm, but giving this a shot for now. Time to see what happens after 63 T6 Spider Forest Maps. Alch and go...

All have been run...

About the results you would expect from a pretty small sample size. I ran 38 of these with the Breach Zana mod. The remaining 25 were either on purpose just the map device quantity, or I forgot, or misclicked.

So 63 T6 Spire forest Maps with 104/104 (I blessed the bisco's to 20%):

• The Incantation - 121 cards
• Her Mask - 41 cards
• The Encroaching Darkness - 30 cards
• The Gambler - 30 cards
• The Betrayal - 29 cards
• Call to the First Ones - 13 cards
• The Doctor - 1 card
• The Realm - 5 cards
• The Valley of Steel Boxes - 1 card
• The Gemcutter

Overall pretty fun, and I know I was lucky with the Doctor drop.

I think I'm done with this league, but next time it's time to play something else, despite that I love CA the most it just has major drawbacks.
Yes it can run high maps if you don't care about dying frequently. I'm sitting on 4.5k HP right now and a Lich in T12 maps just 1shots me with EK. Just lost half a level to it and it got away. Guardians are a pain. Elder seems impossible. IIR for me personally only increases the rate of bad uniques dropping, while other builds are just nuking shit left and right in 6 man parties with ridiculously rolled maps and getting tons of good currency and items.

So basically I'm restricted to lower maps if I want to play efficiently, which don't have any good bases dropping and restricts the amount of good uniques I can get as well. Every minute or so my friends keep linking me the 10c+ drops they found, while I'm here farming Maelstroms (I chained 100 maps) and getting absolutely nothing other than items for the chaos recipe and the occasional chaos orb. CA's DPS is okay if you solve it the American way (throwing lots of money at it) but survivability is still a huge problem, mostly because you can't leech. Don't get me wrong, I still love the build, I just feel like it doesn't hold up in the current meta because if youre not nuking two screens at any given time with 2 ventors and a bisco's in t13+ maps you're doing it wrong.

Pretty convinced IIR is trash now, it's all about IIQ. Oh and as I'm typing this my friend just found another bisco's. Second one for her. Also dropped both Kaom's and Shavs earlier in the league while I found nothing of real value other than a few jewels which were still under 1ex. How? Running high maps with a completed atlas, sextant blocking, double beyond, breach etc. The problem is this build just cannot run that rippy stuff comfortably, unless you sacrifice dps and aoe for survivability and then you'll still lose to the insane clear speeds and breach mobs will overrun you. Mind you I have thrown over 12ex at this build for a +3 max roll DoT bow, a lvl4 empower and some decent jewels. I have yet to see any real returns. It wasn't like this when I played it a few leagues ago. I made about 52ex earlier just getting good drops and doing the chaos recipe but it seems this is no longer working, at least not for me.

I still love the build and will probably return to it someday, but as it stands I'd much rather level a budget character next league for a few ex and destroy red maps all day in a party.

So i crafted two Maraketh bows for this build....what do you think? Are they good for a mirror service?

Sexy.

It's expensive but I'm not sure I'd say mirror-tier. Quite a few (granted, non-Maraketh) up for 50-100ex.

I think if you were to have done that on a Shaper bow with +Max Frenzy or Elder bow with at least one of AoE or +arrow, then yeah.