[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)
" I pulled all of the text from the posts on Thursday, so I did miss some of your edits. I decided to default back to your post one guide/suggestions/finished build and post two leveling. However, I did change the order so the FAQ is post three. This has the added benefit of being able to directly link to the FAQ when someone asks a question answered there. Check the FAQ(currently links to the 'tools' post, but you get the idea) You are correct it is easier to deal with the nested spoilers for leveling trees in their own post. I also realized this is likely the section to get the most attention for edits and changes, so not having to wade around the other sections of the guide while editing is just a smart call on your part. I will gladly go though and update the formatting of the leveling section to match everything else, it will just take a little more time. Also if there is anything you wanted to see format/change in the post let me know so I can incorporate it as I go. I am working on the FAQ section now, and it should be done by tomorrow. I'll post it as soon as it is ready. The spoiler contains the fully reformatted/reorganized post one. Feel free to compress/expand/use/remove/edit/discard any of this that does not match your vision for your guide.
스포일러
Before We Get To The Guide…
The Item Rarity Gem and Degeneration Skills:
Area Damage Modifiers and Tooltip Damage:
A Scion/Shadow Build in the Ranger Section:
Passive Tree for the Ranger Start:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Table of Contents - [01.00] - Overview [02.00] - Media [03.00] - Bandit Rewards [04.00] - Skill Tree & Ascendancies [04.01] - Scion Ascendant Occultist/Deadeye [04.02] - Shadow Trickster [HC Option] [05.00] - Gearing [06.00] - Enchantments [07.00] - Gems & Links [08.00] - Finished Stats [09.00] - Tools [10.00] - Leveling (Post 2) [11.00] - FAQ (Post 3) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Overview - The purpose of this build is to effectively balance survivability, clear speed, and magic find while enabling you to solo up to mid tier maps (including Atziri). This guide is written to provide information to effectively balance these three elements. While the build can work in parties/rotations, and be an effective boss farmer, these are not the targets the build aims to hit. Pros:
Cons:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Media - Video version of this guide -- (June 14, 2015) Deathless Atziri Run with almost full MF spec - didn't *quite* have full res balance =( --- June 15, 2015. Inventory and Stash Management - Exactly what it sounds like! A video talking about stash and inventory management while mapping. Gorge Run - with a 3:40 clear speed. As you can see, it doesn't lag that far behind full-tilt dps builds. Only about 40 seconds, ish. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Bandit Rewards -
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Skill Trees & Ascendancies - As of the Ascendancy launch the best class for this build is the Scion Ascendant, using the Deadeye(Ranger) and Occultist(Witch) nodes. The bonuses provided by the Ascendant are tremendous. Deadeye grants the build an additional arrow, a modified version of Far Shot, and 50% pierce chance. These three perks allow the build to drop the Increased Area of Effect support, gain some incremental damage, and drop the Poacher’s Aim unique jewel and still maintain 100% pierce chance. Occultist grants the build -15% chaos resistance on enemies you curse, and increased chaos if you have killed a cursed enemy recently(last four seconds). These two perks grank the build an effective 15% MORE damage when needed, and a conditional boost to damage and clear speed. The reason that you roll Shadow for Hardcore is simple: Trickster's Ghost Dance provides you with an additional 5% dodge and spell dodge, which is flat out massive. Advance further along that branch and you also get Shade Form, which provides you with flat evasion, flat ES and a multiplicative 20% MORE chance to evade attacks while not on full ES. Even with taking Acrobatics, this gives you a slight ES buffer of damage to absorb an initial hit and then an immediate subsequent boost to your defense. However, also keep in mind that you'll need to decide whether or not you are fine without the AoE gem for this variant, as there's no way to gain Increased Area of Effect for Shadow that's similar to the Scion or Ranger's Deadeye +1 Arrow mechanic. So while this variant is undoubtedly safer, you will also retain similar dps as you saw in 2.1. You can alternately still roll the Scion version and just drop damage for life & Phase Acro as well. I don't recommend running as Shadow for SC. There's no point compared to the benefits Scion offers. - Scion Ascendant Occultist/Deadeye -
[2.2]Scion Passive Tree
This is the base passive skill tree for the build. The posted tree takes Acrobatics, but feel free to adjust for your own play (Taking Phase Acrobatics, or go the Iron Reflexes route). - Shadow Trickster -
[2.2]Shadow Passive Tree
This tree will be the basis of what you want to do for Hardcore. Again feel free to adjust to fit your style of play. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Gearing - The goal of this build is to maximize magic find and survivability, so for gearing you are looking to get life, rarity, and resistances on the majority of your gear. The spoilers show examples of gear, some suggestions on gear progression, and crafting help where applicable. Do not use this section for Gems or Links, there is a section specifically for those after the gear section.
Weapon
Caustic Arrow scales with gem levels, so the best mods for the bow will be the Paragon’s (+1 level of socketed gems), Sharpshooter’s (+2 levels of socketed bow gems), and the master crafted (15 to 30)% increased Damage over Time (Requires a Level 3 Leo, Master of the Arena) prefixes. There are no suffixes we could have on the bow to increase damage, so Ideally your last three mods would be the elemental resistances. Having more elemental resistance on your bow opens up the possibility for more damage mods on your jewels. When shopping for a bow here are the suffixes the build benefits from having:
Crafting a +3 Bow with room for Damage over Time: There are three different methods for guaranteeing a +3 bow, and it all comes down to personal preference. All three methods start off with an item level 64 or higher white 6-link bow of your choice. Maraketh is the recommended base for the additional 6% move speed, and decent attack speed.
Method One
Original method from reddit:
Method Two
Second method from reddit:
Method Three
Method Three, Serleth’s Method
Quiver
With the Ascendant’s Deadeye and passives on the tree the build reaches 100% chance to pierce. This pierce chance is a big damage increase with the Drillneck mechanics, and also a quality of life bonus. The mechanics of Caustic Arrow cause additional clouds each time they pierce an enemy along its flight towards the terminus point. This means you can aim behind packs of monsters and still have multiple chaos clouds created during the arrow’s flight. While saving for a Drillneck any rare quiver with life and resistances is a good choice.
Helmet
Ideally you are looking for a rare evasion base helmet with the following prefixes, Life, Item Rarity, and either high values of Flat Evasion or Percent Evasion. For suffixes you will want Item Rarity and Elemental Resistance.
Gloves
In the completed build your rare gloves should be evasion base with Life, Item Rarity and either Flat Evasion or Percent Evasion as prefixes. The desirable suffixes are Item Rarity, and Elemental Resistance. Sadima’s Touch is a solid pair of gloves to use while leveling, but these will need to be replaced with a pair of rare gloves to help with resistances, and survivability. Aurseize are a solid option providing a good amount of rarity, and decent elemental resistance, the movement speed drawback can be mitigated with well rolled quicksilver flasks, and proper flask management. However, due to the changes in rarity tier of Aurseize it might be easier or more cost effective to just save for a good pair of rare magic find gloves.
Boots
Goldwyrm are the endgame boots for this build. They are the primary source of Increased item quantity, help with mana regeneration, and have a solid single elemental resistance stat. Goldwyrm recently had their rarity tier increased, so there has been a price increase for the boots. The 10% movement speed is not noticeable with good use of the quicksilver flasks. While saving up for Goldwyrm a good pair of rare magic find boots can be used.
Body Armor
Carcass Jack is the damage option for the build. If you can sort out your resistances, this is a great option to further increase your damage and clear speed. All of the stats on the chest are beneficial, except maybe extra gore, so if you can find a way to accomplish resistance balance with Carcass Jack go for it. Queen is a decent defensive option assuming you have both your resistances sorted, and enough evasion in your other pieces of gear to provide a bonus to movement speed. The build already runs Grace and has a lot of dexterity from the tree, so it should not be too hard if you wanted to run Queen. Less damage from Devourers and Drop Bears is a nice touch. Alternatively a rare chest with defensive rolls, life and resistances is a solid choice.
Jewelry
Andvarius is the core of the item rarity in this build, start with any ring you can afford and work your way up from there. Max implicit rolls on gold rings are 15%, and the max explicit roll is 70% Ventor’s Gamble looks good in theory, but the practical application of the IIQ/IIR map coefficient means you need to have a Ventor’s rolled with +7%IIQ and +40%IIR explicit mods. The math for these calculations can be found here. Any rare gold amulet with Life, and Item Rarity as prefixes. The desirable suffixes are Item Rarity, and Elemental Resistance. A rare leather belt with Life, and Armor or Energy Shield as prefixes. For Suffixes you want all three of the elemental resistances. Keeping an open prefix on the belt would enable the addition of Mastercrafted movement speed (Tora, Level 6)
Flasks
We use two Seething Hallowed Flasks, one Catalysed Divine or Eternal Flask, and two Chemist's Quicksilver Flasks of Adrenaline (superior to Ample as we can recover a use ~7.5 charges instead of per 10)
Jewels
The desirable mods on jewels for the build are:
Jewelcrafting
Full details provided by Nasty Toxic Surprisingly, the Crimson Jewels have the best chance to roll our desired affixes. Here is the source of the Crimson Jewel values. From the given page you can easily find the poedb pages for Int and Dex jewels to check my numbers for yourself if you want. source: http://poedb.tw/us/mod.php?type=42&attr=136 Jewel Affixes and Chance to be Rolled, by Jewel Color: %increased life: R 2.84% G 1.81% B 2.00% % increased Chaos Damage: R 1.14% G 1.04% B 1.14% % increased Area Damage: R 3.79% G 3.66% B 3.60% % increased Projectile Damage: R 3.03% G 3.66% B 2.88% % to all Elemental Resistances: R 2.27% G 2.20% B 2.16% % Damage over Time: R 3.79% G 3.66% B 3.60% --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Enchants -
Gloves
Word/Edict/Decree/Commandment of Light
Word/Edict/Decree/Commandment of Reflection
Word/Edict/Decree/Commandment of Spite
Boots
Helmet
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Gems & Links - Primary Skill:
What about before Ascending?
Before gaining Deadeye it is up to you if you want to run Increased Area of Effect or not. If you do decide to run AoE your gem links would be Caustic Arrow - Void Manipulation - Conc Effect - Increased AoE - Rapid Decay(5L) - Empower (6L). There are some situations where Empower should be used over Rapid Decay, and the explination can be found in the FAQ. Single Target added damage: This is strictly for leveling, if leveling as Caustic Arrow. Once you gain Deadeye, you can drop this setup. In a 4-Link we run Essence Drain - Controlled Destruction - Void Manipulation - Rapid Decay. Curse Setup & Terrain Breaker:
Damage Boost & Utility
Auras
Minion & Mobility
Further Options
Example Gem Links, 2.2
This is just here for illustrative purposes. There are many ways you can take the utility and support setups, and this is just one example. Bow: Caustic Arrow - Void Manipulation - Conc Effect - Rapid Decay - Empower - IIR Chest Frenzy - GMP - Faster Attacks - Curse on Hit - Vulnerability (unlinked) Grace Helmet Blink Arrow - Mirror Arrow - Faster Attacks - Flame Golem Gloves Vaal Lightning Trap - Blood Rage - Increased Duration - Artic Armor Boots Wither - Spell Totem - Faster Casting weapon swap In a Heathen Wand, or Haku Weapon, Portal - Faster Casting --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Finished Stats -
[2.2]Stats
2.2 final DPS values. Both of these screenshots are with:
* CA 21 * Empower 4 * 20/20 Concentrated Effect, Void Manipulation and Rapid Decay * 7 frenzy charges * Flame golem * Occultist's increased damage if you've killed a cursed enemy recently.
Level 92 Tree with 4.85k life and only two Shadow start damage nodes
Level 92 Tree with 4.6k life and Shadow all start damage nodes
 The rest of these stats are "outdated" but basically haven't changed since 2.0. I lost 100 life. Whoop.   In a finished build: 2.0 damage: 48k 2.1 damage: 36k 2.2 damage: 62k At effectively no radius penalty. Keep in mind if you're running this build from Shadow, you will likely want to keep the AoE gem. The only way to effectively see the same damage as a Shadow CA player is to get your hands on a corrupted +1 Arrow Drillneck, or be willing to sacrifice the AoE gem. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Tools - Vmoddin's PA Damage Calculator Effective IIQ/IIR map coefficient (C Value) calculator by Caliark. |
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Hi there!
1) - i've been reading this thread since it hit ~350 page and got some questions for those of you who started playing this build in the day of perandus start: was it difficult to acquire/buy +3 bow + drillneck early? Or how much did it cost? I'm afraid i will not be able to buy +3 bow till middle of the league, nor empower lvl 3 - so i'd really like to hear your stories and maybe some advices how to handle big prices of this particular items/gems? 2) - the changes ChronoExile proposed are really awesome - it's great job done, and if it will be incorporated by Serleth - the first page will shine :) 3) I've got 62lvl char in Std with drillneck and +3 bow - and after Ascendancy it shines, but another question - how's going the leveling when you don't have such items and switch to CA in 50/60? Is it really slow or are these only my concerns? 4) To clarify - i want to start as dmg oriented and slowly change to MF gear - is it wise, or maybe i should go diffrent way - first stack IIR + IIQ as much as possible and then when i save currency - buy some really good dps oriented items? What will you suggest? And finally - thanks to all active members of this thread for priceless advices! Cheers, S. |
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" 1 - I do not have a +3 bow in Perandus league, and my +2 is only a 5L. I was able to buy a Drillneck from Cadiro for about 1200 coins. As for generating currency, I am bad at managing a shop. I do not know how to price rare items, and generally only sell the 'challenge required' unique items. I just grind out a lot of maps, Alch and go up to T8/9 and vendor about 5/6 portals worth of rare items. Alterations stack up fast, and if you covert them to fus regularly getting the orbs for those big ticket items should not take too long. 2 - Thanks! 3 - I level as CA, but I tend to enjoy the slower pace, it gives me an opportunity to see the new content/league mechanic as I level, and I susally suplement CA with a trap set up or two. Because the cloud damage scales on levels if you have a low level gem when you switch over at 50/60 it might feel much slower than what you switched from. Keep an eye on poe.Trade to buy higher level CA gems, and 5-Link bows (ilvl64) this should help the transition into CA 4 - The guide suggests going damage first while getting some IIR on gear, and it is a really solid suggestion. Clear speed acts as effective IIQ, and the more items you drop, vendor, and sell, the quicker you will gain the orbs to buy the next upgrade. And as you start to upgrade into the MF gear the currency starts to snowball. Hope that helps. Also I hope others chime in as well, especially regarding question 1 and 3. I do not go for a 'finished' build most of the time in the challenge leagues, so having the perspective of a player who does would be a good counter point to how I play. |
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Hello again :)
@ChronoExile: Thanks a lot for sharing your experience - especially the third & last one :) @3 Generally i wanted an answer to my concern about clear speed - if you can manage to do this easily with +2 and 5l - and even leveling with CA - and it was going slowly but smoothly - then i can sleep well waiting for new challenge league :D ( i'm not so good in quick lvling, although i do use a quick lvling tricks ) @4 I read about 10th times the first page and can't remember a section about going dmg + stacking IIR on gear, then changing for even more IIR + IIQ - so thanks for the answer, now i know my thoughts were going in right direction :) Great thread, glad i found it. Cheers, S. |
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First, @ChronoExile
Thanks again for your hard work, sir. I'm going to wait until you have everything completed so I can merge it all at once and adjust the finished product. Also, since you have exited lurker-mode, your posts answering questions have been thorough and much appreciated as well. Now. " 1) Not really. The thing about this build is that it pays for itself extremely fast, in terms of hours played. You can be fully geared with a 6L +3 Bow, Drillneck, dual Andvarius and Goldwyrm in ~72 hours played. How you get there is answered by 3 & 4 3) It's kiiiiiinda slow, but maybe that's just the veteran in me speaking, who was used to levelling with Flameblast for about a year, which was significantly quicker because prolif was OP as &*($#. It's honestly not that bad though. I take time at the beginning of new leagues to really invest in levelling quickly, putting in 6-8 hour sessions for the first few days, and it typically goes like this: * Day 1: Level 1-60 * Day 2: Level 60-75 * Day 3: Level 75-80/85 (depending on how distracted I get, because typically at this point the guide thread explodes with questions and I'm spending a lot of my day here on the thread) * Day 4: Level 80-88 (depending, as above). By day 2, I have a 5L +2 bow. By day 3, I'm usually running at least Goldwyrm. By Day 4, I have the first Andvarius ring. Then between days 5-7, I pick up Drillneck and finish with the second Andvarius and have a 6L +3 bow. 4) The way I personally level is that I don't care in the slightest about MF until 60. I just try strike a reasonable balance between life and damage from the tree as I'm progressing with Firestorm / Flame Totem. At 60-64, I make the switch to CA and grab a +2 5L bow, and then I self-found my MF to begin with, still focusing mostly on damage and pushing to about 4k life. I alc gold amulets until I get something reasonable, and just use whatever IIR I find elsewhere, grabbing res on the tree to compensate (if necessary) so I can run more IIR, faster, and as I find gear that I can craft resistance onto with Haku/Elreon, I pull the res from the tree to invest in damage. Typically by the time I'm level 70, I have ~100 IIR on gear, completely self-found. This generates me roughly 0.2ex/hr or so depending on the exchange rates, meaning in the next 5 hours of playing, I have Goldwyrm. Five hours after that, I have the first Andvarius. I'm then ~16-20IIQ and 150-200 IIR. Now I'm looking at around more like 0.35-0.4ex/hr, so in the next six hours I have BOTH Drillneck and the second Andvarius. The 6L +3 bow will run anywhere between 7-9ex at this point, and I'm earning ~0.4-0.45ex/hr. Meaning roughly 15 hours after this juncture, I have the 6L bought. Then it's just crushing maps and earning money. Keep in mind, these ex/hr figures are quite literally just the RAW currency drops. As long as you're not spending too much trying to craft your gear or alcing too many things, this is roughly the pace you should achieve without even RUNNING a shop. As for my shop, I run it like this: Each bullet point is it's own tab. * B/o 1 fuse * B/o 1c * B/o 3 fuse * B/o 2c * B/o 5 fuse *..... etc, up to B/o 10c, with the fuse acting as 0.5 chaos. * SHOP Where the SHOP tab is for anything above 10 chaos. Over time, as you get used to pricing rares, you'll just get a feel for what items are roughly worth and you slap them into the shop thread and with the public API on premium tabs, everything's listed automatically. Now, you don't need to run with 20 tabs, but I recommend at least 11 (b/o 1-10c, shop). The important thing to note is, you don't NEED to get value for every item as an MF'er. It's unnecessary. You'll be dropping so many items worth selling that you can afford to list items at slightly UNDER their value in order to move them faster, and thus progress your wealth faster. Anyway, that's how I run it. Any further questions, don't hesitate to ask. Jul 27, 2011 - Sept 30, 2018. Serleth#4392 님이 2016. 5. 24. 오후 2:44:35에 마지막으로 편집
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I still should learn how to price things...
Again I have done no work on the leveling section. I can work on formatting if you want, or wait until there is more information closer to the launch of the next challenge leagues. Just keep me updated on what you think the best course of action is for that post/section. Here is the FAQ section. I expanded on some, and added a few new ones.
FAQ
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Frequently Asked Questions - Q: Please Explain your 0.5ex an Hour Calculation. [spoiler="A:"] These calculations use the Standard League exchange rates as of January, 2015. They have not been updated, and are not expected to reflect Challenge League currency ratios. edit (August 10, 2015): Warbands rates are around 60c:1ex and 110f:1ex. Meaning the currency earned is adjusted to around 0.3ex/hr. This value was compiled after spending two weeks running nothing but blue maps level 66-70 (and the Zana dailies, 74-77) tracking the net currency over time played, and ONLY includes currency earned from:
January, 2015 exchange rates
Fuse 42-44:1
Chaos 36-38:1 Gcp 11-13:1 Regret 15-18:1 Vaal 25-27:1 Chrome 220-250:1 Alts based off fuse @ 42:1 (336:1) Alcs/chisels 90:1 The 0.5ex/hr figure does NOT include ANY sales whatsoever, and will vary at the start of new leagues where exchange rates are closer to 45c:1ex and 70f:1ex, whereupon the exalt/hr rate will dip to about 0.35-4. But the market takes care of the balance anyway, and the value for currency vs item cost ends up equalizing. It also assumes that you are converting all of your income straight to exalt, and does not factor in how you might be spending that currency (rolling maps, alc'ing jewelry, etc). Q: Can you do a Gear Check for Me? What is the Gear Progression? [spoiler="A:"] I'm no longer going to be doing gear-checks on this thread. That takes up a significant amount of my time to run through everybody's gear-checks, particularly early in the league. The thought process is simple: get as much life, as much resistance, and as much IIR as you can on everything that isn't a unique.
TLDR; Progression
Sadima's > 5L +2 bow (ilvl 64 required) > stack IIR as much as possible elsewhere (gold rings, gold amulet, iir on hat) > Goldwyrm > Andvarius > replace Sadimas with IIR gloves > 2nd Andvarius > Drillneck > +3 bow. The last three are italicized to indicate you can adjust that progression based on your preference. [/spoiler] Q: Does Item Rarity/Item Quantity Work with the Cloud? [spoiler="A:"] Yes. If you want to use the IIQ gem in Standard, I do not personally recommend supplanting a damage gem with it. But if you insist, and you want to run both IIQ and IIR at the same time, drop Empower if level 3 or less, and drop Rapid Decay if your Empower is level 4. If you want to run one or the other (rather than both concurrently), your decision between choosing IIQ or IIR is based off of C = (1 + [IIQ/100]) * (1 + [IIR/100]). Whichever gem gives you the higher C coefficient is the gem you use. [/spoiler] Q: In a Standard League Build, Do you Think it would be Better to Take Item Quantity Over Item Rarity? [spoiler="A:"] Depends on the rest of your gearing progression, but generally, yes. You would need to be roughly at around 230-250 IIR to make it worthwhile though, in my experience. IIQ/IIR: MF Balance and Diminishing Returns guide (v2.2) [/spoiler] Q: What Modifiers Affect the Cloud Damage? [spoiler="A:"] There are currently five modifiers that affect the cloud damage:
Q: How Should I Prioritize the Damage Modifiers? [spoiler="A:"] Does not matter. All five affect the cloud equally. Just keep in mind area damage will not show up on the tooltip. But don't worry, it works. For a detailed explanation, please refer to this post.. [/spoiler] Q: Why not Aurseize too? [spoiler="A:"] reddit discussion comparing the effects of diminishing returns based on scaling Item Rarity above the balance threashold with Item Quantity. [/spoiler] Q: How does the change to maps having IIR affect the build? And why not IIR boots instead of Goldwyrm? [spoiler="A:"] Drastic improvement for map rolls. Details on the math can be found here and here, the second link also goes towards explaining why we opt for dual Andvarius instead of Aurseize. [/spoiler] Q: Should I Craft a +3 Bow? [spoiler="A:"] A: Early league, yes, but it's cheaper to do it yourself rather than go through a service or buy one off the market. But that depends on you getting Catarina 8. Mid to mid-late league, it's actually just cheaper to buy one, if all you care about is the +3 roll. So just keep tabs on the market. Self-crafting the +3 bow, using Method One, will cost you 3-4ex (1ex Cata mod, 1ex for the first exalt attempt, 1ex if you're unlucky, and maaaaaaaaybe ~1ex in alterations to get single-stat +2 bow gems). [/spoiler] Q: Why not Phase Acro / Quickness / Etc? [spoiler="A:"] I've deliberately designed this guide to finish at 88. Any other things you decide to pick up afterwards, or in lieu of other options, is your discretion. [/spoiler] Q: How do you progress to earning enough to buy all the upgrades? [spoiler="A:"] You can go pretty much self found gear. For the first bit. All the expensive stuff is really just gravy. All you need to get this build going is a +2 5L bow. You can buy a cheap 5L for 5-7 chaos, and spend 60 alts or less getting +2 on it. Details of how fast it can progress to fully geared can be seen here Stack as much IIR on your rares as you can, taking resist nodes on the tree as necessary. You'll be able to hit 100 IIR without much issue (12% per gold ring = 24% + 15% on amulet = 39%, let's say 12% explicit rolls on each of those slots = 39%+ (15x3) = 85% + 15% on helmet and gloves each = 115%). Then as and when you get bank, start punching out the upgrades as per the Gearing Progression question(second question in the FAQ). [/spoiler] Q: Why no Eldritch Knowledge jewel? [spoiler="A:"] Eldritch Knowledge gets you 20-25% chaos damage depending if you place in Witch or above Blood Drinker. Compare that to Poacher's Aim (25%) and literally any rare jewel with dual damage mods (10% + 10% at the minimum, capping at I think 13% + 13%), Eldritch Knowledge is, at best, a temporary jewel for this build. The moment you get a well rolled dual damage rare jewel with any other useful affix (third damage roll, life, resistances), EKno. becomes sub-par. It's an interim choice. [/spoiler] Q: What about Ventor's Gamble? [spoiler="A:"] Nope, not unless it's 7/40 or better. Analysis here. [/spoiler] Q: Why Hallowed Seething Flasks? [spoiler="A:"] Math and discussion found here. [/spoiler] Q: This tooltip? What the f**k?? [spoiler="A:"] Look at the Chaos Damage Per Second in the Expanded Tooltip  [/spoiler] Q: How do you organize your mapping? I'm taking 9 years to vendor =( [spoiler="A:"] I made a video about it [/spoiler] Q: Uncle Serleth waah y I no haz GG unique drops qq sadface =( [spoiler="A:"] MF setups are never about getting the uniques. You should be approaching it with the mentality that if you happen to get a good unique, great, but it's mostly about brute forcing the RNG to get as many rares as possible to have something halfway decent to sell at all times, and pushing the raw currency farming by vendoring rares and shit uniques for alterations, doing as many recipes as possible, and generally just grinding the hell out of currency farming faster than you would without any other MF. The GG unique drops are meant to be treated as just gravy on the potatoes: adds flavour, but not the substance of the meal. At the time of this comment, I earned 100ex in Warbands over 1 month or so of playtime. Of that wealth, these are the GG uniques I got: Lightning Coil (7ex), Soul Taker (5ex), Divination Distillate (2ex), Kaom's Heart (7ex). That's it. 21ex from GG unique sales. The other 85ex came from more minor sales and just grinding the hell out of maps. [/spoiler] Q: Why spec into "Master of Arena"? [spoiler="A:"] To help with the Blood Rage degen. It was more important in 2.0 before the regen from Growth & Decay. You can spec out of it if you want but I personally find it beneficial for things like desecrated ground maps, vuln maps, puncture, etc. [/spoiler] Q: Okay, but why Blood Rage? Frenzy CoH setup takes care of the frenzy charges, amirite? [spoiler="A:"] Because the majority of the time you don't actually need to curse. You really only need to curse bosses and certain tanky rares / blue packs. Meaning that if you're stopping to fire frenzy, you're actually slowing down your clear speed. Blood Rage allows you to generate the charges automatically, which improves your clear speed, and thus your currency generation/hr. [/spoiler] Q: Increased Area of Effect + Empower/Rapid Decay? [spoiler="A:"] If you choose to run the AoE gem before Ascending, you will have to decide between Empower & Rapid Decay, and the answer is you need an Empower "4" to justify using it. In quotes, because you'll need a raw Empower 4 in a +2 bow, but an Empower 3 in a +3 bow, due to it becoming Empower 4 from the +1 all gems. Once you have Ascended however, and drop the AoE gem, it's all about the dps. Remember that clear speed is effective IIQ. The faster you can kill shit, the more loot you'll drop. Therefore, in the 5L setup, it's more beneficial to run dps-centric rather than running IIR as your fifth link, because the more things you drop, the more chances you're giving your existing IIR to roll. [/spoiler] Q: I Want to Run Caustic Arrow without MF? How do? [spoiler="A:"] There are a few guides elsewhere in the forums focused on a DPS/high survivability version of Caustic Arrow, but here are the bare bones of it: Gearing non-MF Caustic Arrow:
Gearing Hidden Potential Caustic Arrow:
[/spoiler] Q: I Would Like to Play with Some Friends, What do You Suggest? [spoiler="A:"] If you are playing with a single curse support, don’t change anything, just ask them to have one of their curses be Vulnerability, and watch the monsters melt pretty quickly with the added bonus of party rarity and quantity. In most situations for party play you will want to replace your golem with Flame Totem - GMP - Cull - IIR, unless your party prefers other curses, then you can Frenzy - Cull - GMP - IIR - (Faster Attacks/LMP). [/spoiler] Q: I Do Not Have Enough Intelligence!? [spoiler="A:"] That’s right, you don’t. Well at least not to level your Vulnerability and Wither gems to level 20. Thankfully those gems are not required to be level 20 in the completed build, the two intelligence gems you are looking to max out are Concentrated Effect and Item Rarity. The former maxes out with a 111 intelligence requirement (114 if level 21), and the ladder also maxes out with a 111 intelligence requirement (114 if level 21). So let us say the target number is 115, this is really easy to reach. We have the base starting attribute of the Scion (20), three travel nodes (30), Coordination (10), Mana Flows (20), and the travel node on the Ascendancy Tree (40) for a total of 120 intelligence without needing to pick up intelligence on any pieces of gear. As long as you keep the intelligence requirements of your other skills at or below 120 you should be fine. [/spoiler] Q: Divination Distillate? [spoiler="A:"] This is personal preference, are you willing to drop a quicksilver flask? How about a life flask? Can you reliably have the flask active when killing bosses? For me it is more trouble than it is worth, but if you can make it work the bonus IIR/IIQ is nice to have. [/spoiler] [/spoiler] |
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@Serleth
Thanks for amazing explanation which covers most of my concerns - and really thank you for showing how to run shop early - tabs are not a problem, so will surely keep your advices in my mind. |
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I lied. I had more.
Leveling Section
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Leveling - - Serleth's 2.2 Scion Leveling Guide -
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There are two ways to do this. Both of them will require that you mule Caustic Arrow from Ranger's “Breaking Some Eggs” quests. - Option A: - Firestorm & Flame Totem / Searing Bond / Fire Trap If you're going to mule, you'll want to start a Templar and level it up to the Cavern of Wrath where you can mule Flame Totem from Breaking Some Eggs, and Firestorm from The Siren's Cadence quests. From that point, you can roll Scion. - Option B: - Orb of Storms / Spark Coincidentally, you can use this levelling process for both setups, the difference being that if you opt for Spark, you can scale a bit of additional damage if you feel necessary by picking up some of the projectile damage nodes (namely, Fury Bolts) a little earlier. Ziggy D has put together a nice guide for it, if you want to check a video out. As far as our tree selection goes: From here (~level 50) you can safely make the swap to CA by respeccing your points to this tree (as long as you've been levelling the gem the entire time) - 2.2 Shadow (HC) Leveling Guide -
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Other than the fact that you're rolling Shadow, and thus need to path your tree differently, the process itself is identical to Scion:
There are two ways to do this. Both of them will require that you mule Caustic Arrow from Ranger's “Breaking Some Eggs” quests. - Option A: - Firestorm & Flame Totem / Searing Bond / Fire Trap If you're going to mule, you'll want to start a Templar and level it up to the Cavern of Wrath where you can mule Flame Totem from Breaking Some Eggs, and Firestorm from The Siren's Cadence quests. From that point, you can roll Shadow. - Option B: - Orb of Storms / Spark Coincidentally, you can use this levelling process for both setups, the difference being that if you opt for Spark, you can scale a bit of additional damage if you feel necessary by picking up some of the projectile damage nodes (namely, Fury Bolts) a little earlier. Ziggy D has put together a nice guide for it, if you want to check a video out. As far as our tree selection goes: This is where I recommend you make the full time switch to CA, dropping the Shadow Ele nodes and bridging across Entropy and prepare to grab Growth and Decay like this. From there, just flesh out the rest of the tree and adjust for more life as you see fit. You may opt to sacrifice a jewel or two in order to grab Written in Blood and/or Profane Chemistry. I leave the option up to you. As I mention in the tree spoiler up above, I've left the tree deliberately more glassy, in part because Trickster's passives should help out with the survivability. - Ranger!?!? Leveling Guide -
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Roll a Witch, and play up to Brutus. Watch your gem levels or be willing to buy extra from Nessa before you reroll. Get Ethereal Knives, (Breaking Some Eggs), Clarity & Added Lightning (Brutus). Start your Ranger, you will be dual-wanding while leveling. You are looking for a GBB wand (Ethereal Knives - Added Lightning - Phys to Lightning) or a GGB wand (Ethereal Knives - Added Cold - Added Lightning/Phys to Lighting). In your off hand you want a wand with at least one Red socket (create a +1 Fire Gems) and use for Searing Bond (will need to trade for this). Tree nodes: Finesse, Heart of Oak, up to Shadow life, thru Entropy, up to Blood Drinker, Growth of Decay, Method to the Madness, the entire Duelist section (starting with Dirty Techniques, then Master of Arena, Fury Bolts, Golem's Blood), Scion Life, finish the right-side loop by going through Herbalism, remove Method to the Madness for frenzy charges/jewel slots, then polish the rest of the tree off. Basically in that order. Now I should be done. At least until the updates for Prophecy really get started. Also When updating the main post, depending on how you decide to do it, could link at least one of the Chemist's Quicksilver in the flask section. (I didn't have one to easily link) |
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I actually don't have one either, lol.
I ended up rolling Ample first on both my Perandus quicksilvers and just kept with that. I'll see about getting one done in Standard before June 3. Jul 27, 2011 - Sept 30, 2018.
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New formatting is up.
Much thanks once again to ChronoExile. Still a few things to edit in, most notably the flasks which I forgot to include a new version with the Chemists prefix, but by and large it's cleaned up and beautiful. I'll fold in the flask change (and anything else I, or others, spot along the way) closer to Prophecy release. Jul 27, 2011 - Sept 30, 2018.
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