[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)
" Hey Piros - glad to see you posting here! >> I figure an MF build will benefit the most from this Only if MF increases the rate of ELder/Shaper drops - I've no clue whether this is true or not. Is the algorithm for Elder/Shaper drops: 1) Drop an item. If it's rare, roll for Elder/Shaper; or 2) Drop an item. Immediately roll for Elder/Shaper. If 1 - then you'll see more Elder/Shaper drops going MF. I'd guess that IDing and then vendoring for Exalt shards is the way to go; If 2 - then MF will have no impact on Elder/Shaper drop rates. ==== I tend to think that 1 is more likely - but I've done no research into this so it could just as well be 2. |
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Thoughts on the league:
Spoiler
I'm liking this league a ton! My thoughts are likely distorted in large part because I'm liking the original build I chose so much. My original build... I decided to farm the unique Oni-Goroshi sword from day 1. 8 hours after league start I dropped one. Oni-Goroshi is a 6-link 1-handed sword that occupies both weapon slots, and gives you a fire-damage debuff when you ignite an enemy along with a very nice DPS buff. The sword takes over your normal voice acting, replacing it with statements from the sword. This later part is itself a reason to get the sword as it introduces new voice-overs for much of the leveling content. At any rate, the sword is extremely nice; it does more and more damage as you level. I breezed up to maps 4 hours after dropping the sword (12 in total) in spite of spending 8 hours farming Twilight Strands. ==== My goal for the Oni-Goroshi toon I'm now playing (as Jugg Molten Strike/Wild Strike) was simply to farm Uber Lab to fund a 2nd or 3rd character; in fact, my toon is performing much better than expected. I still plan to fund other toons, but my current character is more than capable of complete most challenges, but will struggle as a boss killer - and although Wild Strike is very nice for map clearing - it's not a top tier map clearing skill. ==== This league, I plan on rolling 3 toons in total: 1) An Uber Lab clearer to fund other characters - my Oni-Goroshi toon is perfect for this; 2) A super fast map clearer that's not too bad at bosses (Deadeye Ranger seems perfect for this, with the additional arrow, nice movement speed and good defenses); and 3) A boss killer - Zizran's toon looks to be insanely defensive - check out the dual Uber Elder kill linked above. ===== In short, this league offers a lot of fun - so many ascendencies have been buffed that numerous builds are uber powerful. ===== League downsides: 1) Summoners have been unnecessarily nerfed given the huge buffs to other classes; if summoners were completely unchanged, they'd still be lagging behind several Champion/Juggernaut/Hierophant/Deadeye/etc. builds. The buffs to other builds make the summoner nerfs completely unneccessary; 2) It's buggy - this is the buggiest league I've played. Crashes, lockups, can't complete certain unique maps, etc. abound; 3) Beastiary mechanics are poorly implemented - legendary beasts are too rare; it would be nice to track what maps to run to farm certain legendary beasts; the necro-nets, although a nice addition, don't allow you to corpse target (work around this by equipping some corpse targetting skill); the UI for Beastiary recipies is confusing; etc. All-in-all - the Beastiary League and mechanics to this point are very poorly implemented - if GGG spent another month developing Beastiary mechanics, I think that Beastiary would in itself be really fun; that said, the viability and power of so many ascendencies/builds overshadows the poor implementation of new Beastiary league mechanics. ===== In all, a super fun league for me. Last league I wandered between characters, leveling about 5 or 6 possible end-game toons to 85+, never settling on one or more as fit-to-purpose. As a result, I finished at 34/40 challenges. I enjoyed last league, but was disappointed in my progress. This league, I'm pretty sure that I'll hit 40/40 - but I'm playing a lot more this league than last and I seem to have hit upon a super first toon, perfect for clearing Uber Lab and thus funding a map clearer and a boss killer as my 2nd and 3rd toons. Last edited by hankinsohl#1231 on Mar 14, 2018, 11:22:39 AM
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Spoiler
Honestly, I
The RNG behind getting decent beasts (re: Boss fights) is almost as bad, if not worse, than Liches were. Completing the entire Bestiary wouldn't be as bad if there weren't spawns that required vaal side areas, prophecies, or elder zones. If there's a league where I break my 40/40 streak, this'll be it. I started out with RF but quickly realized the old way of building it, but shifting it over to Chieftain/Jugg, simply wouldn't work and I wanted to give the Uber lab a try, since I haven't done so after the most recent changes to lab. I love RF, though, so I might roll UberDan's character (the one Zizaran was running in your linked video), but having already pushed two characters to 88+, I'm not really up for another reroll at this point. And, I completely respecced my RF'er to an Ahn's Might Jugg. Though, I gotta say I'm pretty impressed with Cleave's AoE with the Overwhelming Odds Jewel. Idk if it's Whirling Blades or just something with my setup though or something, but at least four times a map my WB doubles up and I'm caught out of position. The single target's pretty nice as well. The build is more or less complete outside of some QoL stuff, and is capable of doing this type of damage to Shaper (check out the last segment of health and how fast it drops), so... I just gotta get it a bit more tanky, I think, which probably means some pretty patient leveling. Currently at 5800 or so life and it feels Le Squish sometimes. AMAZING for lab runs though. But yeah, overall I'm pretty nonplussed with Bestiary and am struggling to retain interest. My second character (Death's Oath Occultist) is fantastic for map clearing but questionable on bosses due to the nature of CI and incoming degen. I may need to tweak gear to get crafted faster start of ES recharge to feel more comfortable. Fairly broke at the moment though, especially given how expensive maps are this league, so the next few days are probably just farming and knocking off a few challenges while I decide what to do with the league. Jul 27, 2011 - Sept 30, 2018.
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Spoiler
Pokemon Blue was a personal favorite in middle school. With a link-cable and enough classmates to humor my trade requests, I completed my Dex in generation one. I still play the franchise regularly enough, though I am stalled on a ribbon quest in generation four at the moment. Anyway the above is to say, I enjoy the Beast league. The mechanic is fun enough for me to want to engage, and the changes to nets in the patch last night, should help with the name-lock requirement. However, as others have stated the rare nature of the legendary beasts (esp the ones required for the 'First One' fights) seem to be ill balanced. Generally the challenges seem to have been increased compared to the last two or so leagues, or my perception is they have been. To be fair, I've never cleared the Alluring Abyss or The Shaper's Realm, so this is also an ideal time for me to learn the mechanics and step up my game of the high level content. Currently my only character in the league is a Scion Hierophat / Necromancer using Dark Pact totems. Same build I ran last league (based on the Build of the Week) but with a few changes due to the big ascendancy overhaul. Play style is fun, if you like totems, and if I am aware of what is occurring on screen there are enough layered defenses to help keep me alive. With a 6L and a little more practice I should be able to down Uber Atziri, and maybe attempt Shaper. Assuming I can buy/get to the red tier maps. Build has little issue with lab, but I don't go for full key runs, so profit isn't there compared to maintaining ease of completion. I do have an idea for a second build. MORE TOTEMS. This time the punchy kind. There should be the damage output and mitigation in this concept build to try the higher tier content as well. I will be pushing for the portal effect for sure. My motivation is a little low for attempting the full 40. But if I do go for it, at least Atziri is already complete. Honestly though, I am not sure if motivation changes are due to game-time/burnout, league, social elements, or other factors. Which brings me to a known issue at this time, My computer. I built my current tower six years ago on a budget while I was in school. Playing on all the low settings, and still having issues rendering the shrubberies in Mud Flats while I hunt for the white bird at the end of a gaming session. I am in the process of replacing/building new, but the person who said they would help has been very slow to provide any actual help. (any recommendations or resources on this would be great). With a better play experience, I assume some level of motivation would return... at least I hope so, as I do enjoy this game. |
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Spoiler
They have definitely increased the difficulty for 40/40 this league.
There are only five choices for end-game grinds, and four are required for completion. In addition to this, Elder Guardians require an additional 50 kills (although Elder kills now count), and Shaper Guardians / Shaper Kills require an additional 110. On top of THAT, the Bestiary itself is its own end-game grind, between the rarity of legendary/RNG-gated captures for the four requisite boss kills, and completing the ENTIRE Bestiary. To a lesser extent, the map-completion challenge is arguably harder. While you can zerg it down in as little as 500 maps if you stack a sextant, Zana mod, and influenced map, there's the associated cost with doing so (which requires a minimum average of 7c per map, between a journeyman sextant and Perandus (in order to simultaneously go for the Coffers challenge or farm Harbingers for Beachheads). As an aside, multiple sextants do not stack for this challenge. Lastly, map costs are 1.5-2x more expensive this league, which makes Guardian farming a LOT more expensive. Normally, it costs about 960c to do Shaper Guardians (in the highly unlikely event you have to buy all your T16s). This league, the same amount of runs (40) would cost 1,400c, and the full 150 (assuming you kill Shaper each time), would cost 3,360c. All in all, while I'm sure plenty of people will still push for 40/40, for me, this is enough combined effort, in conjunction with me being indecisive about what build I want to stick with as my main farmer (I'm thinking of rolling the DirtyDan RF or a Facecestral Warbreaker build), I think they've finally crossed the line for me in terms of level of dedication (both in time and currency) required to complete it. But, we'll see. I'm enjoying lab runs, which is giving me approximately as many Atziri sets as labs I run, so that should knock out two of the end-games. I'll vaguely push for 39/40 (not including the Bestiary) and see where I'm at at the end of the month, and go from there. As for building a rig, if you're just replacing parts as you go, that's honestly pretty easy to do on your own. Track the location of things, the wires, take photos if you have to, and most parts are just plug-and-play. I've looked up precisely nothing on the internet, and I was able to replace my MOBO/CPU and GPU on my own in my last two upgrades. For the most part, towers are surprisingly uncomplicated. It's mostly just about making sure you have power to your externals, lights (if you have them), mobo, gpu, hard drives, and then making sure those last three things are all connected where they should go (gpu into the mobo, mobo into the HDs). So replacing parts is pretty easy. EG, if you're replacing the mobo, you just pull out your gpu, pull out the mobo, slot the new mobo, plug the gpu into the new mobo, power both, connect the mobo to the HD and you're done. If you're building from scratch, I'm sure there's plenty of guides out there via google or youtube that can help you out component by component. Jul 27, 2011 - Sept 30, 2018. Last edited by Serleth#4392 on Mar 15, 2018, 2:28:20 PM
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I would like to try this build on HC so I made some alterations to your tree and would like to know what you think and if i should change something
PoB: https://pastebin.com/n8AeQ5ff |
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Hybrid is not the way to go with CA. Hybrid builds need to regen one source and leech to the other to be effective, or at the very least leech to ES and flask to life.
The ES on kill from Trickster is okay, until you start dealing with bosses, but ultimately not the option you want to go with for CA. Needs to either be full on CI, or full life (with just a bit of ES to trigger some of the Trickster effects). Perfect Agony also does nothing for the build. The CA cloud is not an Ailment. Jul 27, 2011 - Sept 30, 2018. Last edited by Serleth#4392 on Mar 15, 2018, 10:42:40 PM
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More off-topic league discussion:
Spoiler
I've been semi-chasing Elder kills; it's slow going. However, the good news is that you'll be very close to completion of the augmented-map challenge by the time you get your 150 Elder+guardian (EG) kills in. I'm at 15 EG kills and have roughly 150 augmented map completions. I haven't used Zana mods on these maps so if you do that you should comfortably complete the augmented map challenge simply by doing the EG kills. === Lab hasn't been fantastically profitable for me - no good enchants; I do make currency from the runs though. A good source of income for me has been doing a bunch of prophecies - the Kaom's ring upgrade prophecy makes lots of currency (did that twice); I got a 5-link prophecy once; my two Council runs dropped the gloves that poison - lightning variety - for about 100c for both. I'm using my Gracious Masters on Zana, but once I level her, those are starting to climb in price (was 2c, now 5c and climbing). Plus the Twice Enchanted prophecy is great for lab. Also, there's a Beastiary recipe that gives you 5 new prophecies at once. The recipe takes some common yellow beasts so it's always available. This way you don't even have to buy silver coins. In spite of no good lab enchants, currency just keeps pouring in for me. I'm sitting on a decent amount of currency at the moment, trying to decide if I want to fund an Uber Dan-style 2nd character, plus I've already spent quite a bit on my Oni toon. So for sure if income seems low, I'd recommend prophecies as a good income augmenter. === With regard to map expense, I expect that maps will become at least somewhat less expensive as people start to run the Harbinger mod. === Is there a build guide for Uber Dan's Righteous Fire-Scorching Ray build? I downloaded Zizran's toon that's playing the build into Path of Building so it's no problem for me recreating it that way - but a good build guide frequently offers tips not immediately apparent when first looking at a new build. === RE Juggernaut survivability - the Oni-Goroshi sword takes both weapon slots, so I can't block attacks/spells, nor do I dodge/evade and, to cope with the sword's fire degen, I can't really go Vaal Pact. Consequently, the Oni toon feels incredibly squishy against spell damage. I usually have to mash instant health pots prior to closing to melee range just to survive. Mob damage seems to have gone up quite a bit this league; trash mobs are actually scary! === RE Chrono's question about PC building. A resource I've used in the past is Tom's Hardware. It's been about 5-years or so since I've been on the site, but it used to have nice build guides for various types of systems and budgets - if those are still part of the site you ought to be able to find one to your liking. Last edited by hankinsohl#1231 on Mar 16, 2018, 10:55:25 AM
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" Hmm so how should I do this on HC? I don't like to rely on evasion for HC cuz eventually you will take dmg. Since hybrid doesn't work should i adapt it for armor+eva and get iron reflexes? Or should i go full CI (never done CI since i mostly play HC and i never liked the idea of having 1 hp xD)? Last edited by Frascione#6640 on Mar 16, 2018, 5:05:27 PM
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I don't really recommend CI for builds that don't leech or don't regen, which this build does not. For that, you'd probably want to build it out of Occultist so that you get some regen on kill and take advantage of Profane Bloom.
If you're not comfortable with CI or evasion, your only other real option if you're set on playing this is Iron Reflexes as you've mentioned. Scale it entirely off evasion gear, maybe get a QoTF and take IR. Jul 27, 2011 - Sept 30, 2018.
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