[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

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Elhazzared wrote:

It's not about diminuishing returns. The people who tested this basicly got less rares when they went past a certain limit. It was actively detrimental except when they just pumped both IIQ and IIR to very high levels at which point while deiminishing returns were in effect, they were still gaining more rather than actively losing.

Is this the study you are referring to? Table 2 from that study shows that initial increases in IIQ provide the greatest benefit and then diminish in value as IIQ is increased, which is what we'd expect.

Honestly though, I take that study with a grain of salt, as there are multiple points of possible mis-analysis.

Depends what you mean by speedrun.

If by speedrun you mean that you're skipping rares except for good bases and recipe items, then you're losing currency for no good reason. You don't need to burn all 6 portals, but you might as well just not MF if all you're going to do is recipes and raw drops.

If by speedrun you mean running low-level maps and just murdering everything up to and including the boss, then gtfo'ing, yeah, that's acceptable. As long as you're still making portal trips as necessary along the way.



As for Increased Item Quantity, I tested it out and personally I hate dropping the AoE gem. Despise it. That's my personal preference though. I'd rather get significantly greater coverage than extra IIQ.

I understand that it's not ideal in terms of the C value balancing, but that's a sacrifice I'm personally willing to make. Mileage may vary for others.



As for the diminishing returns discussion, adding the IIQ gem on its own isn't enough to hit that barrier. You'll be at roughly 70/320 or so in a finished build, and from what I understand from other discussions regarding the C value balance, the ratio of IIQ versus IIR where you start to see diminishing returns is roughly 1:4 (IIQ:IIR), meaning that we've got enough rarity (+20-40% or so) to make running 70% quantity worthwhile. It's when you get less than a 1:4 ratio (ie, 70:279 or less) where you're at a point where there isn't enough rarity to help improve what IIQ's doing.

In practice, when I was running IIQ on my FB MF build before the prolif nerf, I noticed I was still seeing a net increase in rares and recipe completion at 70:320.

So for what it's worth, in my experience if you want to drop AoE for IIQ... you can, without worrying about seeing less positive results.

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Serleth wrote:

As for Increased Item Quantity, I tested it out and personally I hate dropping the AoE gem.

Interesting. I've been running with small to very small AOE ever since I began using Poison Arrow. I compensate for small AOE by running with very high/capped pierce (most of us do this) and firing more arrows than I would with high area coverage.

I've got a Carcass Jack in my inventory somewhere which I'll try out one of these days just to get a feel for high AOE.

But right now I'm trying to complete all the Achievements (other than Cut-throat) and am having a devil of a time getting high level maps, lol.

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Elhazzared wrote:

It's not about diminuishing returns. The people who tested this basicly got less rares when they went past a certain limit. It was actively detrimental except when they just pumped both IIQ and IIR to very high levels at which point while deiminishing returns were in effect, they were still gaining more rather than actively losing.

i prefer IIQ over IIR, since i am already getting 6 portals full of rare, there is no points in getting more rares xD i am even filtering out 2*4 and 2*3 items xD 2H/Bow/armor to make more room in my inventory xD

this is why i prefer IIQ over IIR !! (as long as u dont drop the clearspeed!!)
personnaly I dont rly see any clearspeed drop in using IIQ, espcially because i am clearspeeding low level map 75 and under for more 6s/unique/currency/jewelry recipe which i think is the main sources of income here, basically I dont vendor rares for alterations quite often i prefer speed running a 2nd map, for more currency drop and i often get more out of it

it takes roughly the same time selling 4 more portals of rare than running 1/2 2nd map
4 more portal full of rare is roughly 8-10alts or (1c in standard), while running 1/2 of a second map i can clearly make more than 1c, !!

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xenochaos1 wrote:

there is no points in getting more rares

Well just to be clear...

There are 2 ways of getting more rares.

1) Increase IIR - doing this increases the fraction of total drops which will be rare.

and/or

2) Increase IIQ - this will cause more stuff to drop. You'll get more rares because more stuff is dropping.

So which is better?

We're not sure, actually, but we assume that maximizing the C value will produce best results (other factors remaining equal).

That said, there's a small additional benefit of IIQ over IIR in that IIQ also increases the amount of currency which drops - IIR has no effect on currency. But the amount of currency that drops is so low that you can largely ignore this when chosing between IIQ and IIR.

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xenochaos1 wrote:

i prefer IIQ over IIR, since i am already getting 6 portals full of rare, there is no points in getting more rares xD

False.

More rares = more recipes.

All the IIQ in the world doesn't mean anything if you don't have an appropriate amount of IIR to offset it.

I.e., if you're only running a 5L bow (and thus, only IIQ instead of both IIQ/IIR) you'll probably be somewhere around 70/240, which as mentioned is below the 1:4 threshold to get the maximum benefit out of the balance.

i still think the increased curency/6s drop is superior to finding a bit more rare amulet for recipe

That's fair. Everybody has different experiences.

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hankinsohl wrote:

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xenochaos1 wrote:

there is no points in getting more rares

Well just to be clear...

There are 2 ways of getting more rares.

1) Increase IIR - doing this increases the fraction of total drops which will be rare.

and/or

2) Increase IIQ - this will cause more stuff to drop. You'll get more rares because more stuff is dropping.

So which is better?

We're not sure, actually, but we assume that maximizing the C value will produce best results (other factors remaining equal).

That said, there's a small additional benefit of IIQ over IIR in that IIQ also increases the amount of currency which drops - IIR has no effect on currency. But the amount of currency that drops is so low that you can largely ignore this when chosing between IIQ and IIR.

I think it's actually pretty noticeable going from 20IIQ to 100IIQ and rares for the most part are 1/1000 chance to be even saleable.

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Nephalim wrote:

I think it's actually pretty noticeable going from 20IIQ to 100IIQ and rares for the most part are 1/1000 chance to be even saleable.

Just so.

But the real factor to consider is whether or not you could have obtained more drops by, let's say, going from 20IIQ to 40IIQ and increasing your IIR by much, much more.

Again, we don't know for sure - but we use "C" as our best guess as how to maximize drops by increasing IIQ and IIR.

Side note (in spoiler):