[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

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daemmon wrote:

Don't get me wrong, I love your build and your explanation video about it... but!

Going MF is something that most people do with a cheap character to start off in a league, just to farm lots of currency/items for other specs that require good gear to do well.

I think the investment you have in your character right now (6L +3 bow mostly) is far too high on the spectrum of what people want to spend on their average MFer, BUT, also considering this is probably one of the first MF builds I've seen in beta doing a 78 map, so mad props to you for that mate.

Personal suggestion: I'd aim for a more "budget" MFer that can at least scratch the surface of mapping, in the long run for a new league it should work better. I'm planning on doing one on the next wipe, and would def look at some of the options you've taken in order to improve mine.

Thanks!

Hi Daemmon, thanks for checking the build out.

Thing is, while the absolute final version of the build is relatively expensive, there's a few things to keep in mind that make this build actually very budget-conscious for a first character roll.

All you really need to do to get this build working well is a 5L bow. You can buy one for about 5 chaos, and then spend 60 alts to get the +2 roll on it. That's dirt cheap! Just make sure the item level is ilvl 64+ so you can actually roll the +2 affix.

Everything else (+3 Bow, 6L'd, Drillneck) is just gravy that optimizes the damage, but you can get farming no problem!

A 5L +3 bow will cost about 6ex. Then you can 6L it at your leisure. Drillneck will be about 5ex or so.

But, you can do all the MF setup in this build with just a +2 5L bow you craft yourself for less than 10 chaos!

At 0.5ex per hour (once you get your MF gear lined up), you can buy a +3 bow in 12 hours of farming, and Drillneck in another 10 hours of farming. That's only a day worth of farming maps to get the character geared.

And since you're very likely to be dropping good items to sell (especially in a challenge league when it's easier to move middle-rolled rares), it will actually be a lot faster than that =)

Then the 6L is just to add more IIR! =)


To provide an actual example for you of how this worked for me in Beta:

I started out with rustic sash bows.

Then I got Death's Harp. I used that to level 64. I bought a 5L white bow. I crafted +1 all gems on it (got lucky), so I bought Empower immediately and I had my 5L setup.

I stacked as much MF as I could. I ended up with about 130% iir and 19% iiq.

In the next couple days I dropped a Pledge of Hands. I immediately sold that for a +3 bow. At that point I had enough currency to 5L it.

Over the next few days, I dropped two Alphas Howls, and a Tabula (which was going for 2ex at the time). With some spare currency I had around, I bought a Drillneck.

The next day I dropped a Rat's Nest, so I exchanged it for an Andvarius.

Then I farmed Docks for fragments and ran sets for 3 days to afford fuses to 6L the bow. Took me about 1,200 fuses.

Granted, I had some time off, but from start to finish, I got this build 6L'd with a +3 bow and Drillneck in 6 days.

And I started from a wipe. So absolutely nothing in the bank when I started out.

And realistically, farming 66-70 maps, a +3 bow is just icing on the cake. You can do just fine at the start of a league with a +2 bow. Hell, you won't even have empower either, which is another one of the more expensive items.

5L + Drillneck + Andvarius (just grab a ow roll) and you're pretty set. Shit will die before it even has a chance to hit you.

Exactly, Emfx! And even then, Empower is cheaper than it used to be. You can pick one up within about a week of a fresh league for 7-10 chaos. It's the GCPs that get expensive, but in the meantime you can buy a Haku weapon and slot it there to give it the extra xp and level it faster. =)

useful

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Serleth wrote:

60 alts per +2 bow gem roll. Then you regal it. You have to do that 240 times (240 regals). I believe regals are approximately 20:1ex? So that's 13ex of regals. Alterations let's say are 300:1. 60 * 240 = 14,440 / 300 (alts per ex) = 48 ex + 13ex of regals = 61ex.

Since +1 is a lot rarer than +2 bow level gem, wouldnt it be better to alt +1 and then target +2 with regal ?

By the way, Acrobatics is a must have for PA build.

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Malone wrote:

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Serleth wrote:

60 alts per +2 bow gem roll. Then you regal it. You have to do that 240 times (240 regals). I believe regals are approximately 20:1ex? So that's 13ex of regals. Alterations let's say are 300:1. 60 * 240 = 14,440 / 300 (alts per ex) = 48 ex + 13ex of regals = 61ex.

Since +1 is a lot rarer than +2 bow level gem, wouldnt it be better to alt +1 and then target +2 with regal ?

By the way, Acrobatics is a must have for PA build.

Not really (re: Acro), but ofc it would be ideal to take. After all, I got to level 89 without Acrobatics, and minimal deaths. Farmed Atziri no problems without Acro, too.

But I'm also the kind of player who's heavy on his mechanical play so it's not an issue for me. If it's a build you're not adjusted to, or if you're relatively new to the game or just don't have the experience behind you yet, you could just take Acro earlier, drop an Andvarius ring so you don't have to worry about Survivalist, and level up with Acro. Not a huge deal.

All that said, thanks for the reminder. I mention Acro in the video but haven't put it in the written guide yet.

But that's why this guide is currently a Work in Progress as well. With ideal gear that would allow for maxed resistances with less res all taken off the tree (or a better jewel even in my second slot), I would spec out of Survivalist and into Acrobatics. Or alternately, just level to 92. =)

To answer your other question, yes, you do stand a better chance of regalling +2. But from a more limited currency standpoint, it's easier to save up say, 120 alterations, a scour, and a regal. So you craft your initial +2 bow, play with that until you build the aforementioned currency, scour, alter +2, regal again. If you miss, you're no further behind. But if you spend all your alts going for +1 and don't get it, you're playing with a +0 bow. That's the perspective I was coming from.

But, inverting the math, 240 alts per attempt for +1 all gems, + 60 probable regals = 14,400 alts = 48ex in alts = + 3ex of regals = 51ex. 10ex savings compared to doing it inversely (going for +2 then regalling).

Does IIR gem work with PA clouds?

Different Skilltree without Drillneck

Tree Comparison

I played PA quite extensively in Beta and in my opinion it is not required to pick up Drillneck. In your case I would actually advise against it, since you do not use a pierce gem. A rare Quiver provides you with a lot more life and easily two high resists. Losing the Drillneck and subsequently not taking the Pierce cluster is a damage loss of a total of 90% increased damage. (I ignore Poachers Aim since it is equal to a rare Jewel.) That sound a lot but with some changes in the tree you can pick up three additional jewel sockets. A jewel socket should equate to at least 20% damage and up to somewhere above 30% and maybe some other useful prefix. (Chaos damage prefix and Area Dmg/DoT/Raw Dmg/Projectile Dmg suffixes. Life i.e. is a prefix.) I would assume that on Live with a economy it should be easy to at least get +20% jewels. Especially if you have the budget of a Drillneck free.
Whats more important the whole thing allows you to pick up Acro and Phase Acro, which greatly boosts your survivability.

As a net change you lose about 30% to 0% damage and 350 flat evasion and gain Acro and Phase Acro, >30 flat life and >60% resist.

I also took out the Mana and Aura nodes. Those are not needed if you are willing to sacrifice one of your flask slots for a mana flask and juggle a bit with your auras (Purity of Elements instead of Purity of Fire/Ice/Lightning). Eventually you can probably just use a Divination Distillate to sustain your mana for added MF. (Did not test that but numbers suggest it should be possible.)

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endowfeww wrote:

Does IIR gem work with PA clouds?

Yes.

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tzuiop wrote:

I played PA quite extensively in Beta and in my opinion it is not required to pick up Drillneck. In your case I would actually advise against it, since you do not use a pierce gem. A rare Quiver provides you with a lot more life and easily two high resists. Losing the Drillneck and subsequently not taking the Pierce cluster is a damage loss of a total of 90% increased damage. (I ignore Poachers Aim since it is equal to a rare Jewel.) That sound a lot but with some changes in the tree you can pick up three additional jewel sockets. A jewel socket should equate to at least 20% damage and up to somewhere above 30% and maybe some other useful prefix. (Chaos damage prefix and Area Dmg/DoT/Raw Dmg/Projectile Dmg suffixes. Life i.e. is a prefix.) I would assume that on Live with a economy it should be easy to at least get +20% jewels. Especially if you have the budget of a Drillneck free.
Whats more important the whole thing allows you to pick up Acro and Phase Acro, which greatly boosts your survivability.

If you've tried crafting jewels yourself in Beta, you know that getting the proper rolled affixes can easily cost 1ex in alterations just for a magic jewel. If you regal something useless, you have to try again.

In anticipation of that being factored into jewel prices, I anticipate a well rolled tri-affix jewel to be in the neighborhood of 15-20 chaos, and a proper rolled quad-affix jewel to be in the 2ex+ range, particularly if you're going to get two damage affixes, life, and a good resistance roll. You would need three proper rolled jewels to offset the loss of Drillneck, damage-wise, putting you in roughly the same price range, if not more expensive.

I have yet to find a better rare jewel than the one that I'm using. Meanwhile, finding good gloves and a helmet is relatively easy, and you can do so for about 5 chaos to get a decent dual res with life, or tri-res with no life, and mastercraft whatever you're missing for 4c or less.

The short story is that going the Drillneck route is a little bit more tree-intensive if you want to get both Andvarius' working sooner and capped res, but it will also be easier to gear and see better damage, faster, since getting a Drillneck with the current state of jewels is actually a lot easier than finding even one proper rolled quad-affix Jewel.

Cap the res without Survivalist, you get Acrobatics. Get a +3 bow with Mana Gain on Kill, you drop Soul Siphon and get two dodge points. Level up twice more, Phase Acro.

Which brings me to this:

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I also took out the Mana and Aura nodes. Those are not needed if you are willing to sacrifice one of your flask slots for a mana flask and juggle a bit with your auras (Purity of Elements instead of Purity of Fire/Ice/Lightning). Eventually you can probably just use a Divination Distillate to sustain your mana for added MF. (Did not test that but numbers suggest it should be possible.)

Imo, running properly rolled life flasks and running a low level Clarity with mana regen, or no clarity at all but decent Mana on Kill + Rallying Cry, is far more important than pulling a life flask out to use a mana flask. Mana flasks are wasted slots, imho. And in order to run both two purities will absolutely be a requirement without the proper jewel rolls. And it's likely that by the time you find a jewel that will suit your needs (if you want to get it earlier rather than waiting), you'll have to juggle other gear, which just increases the net cost of the build.


The long story short of it is that while I'm not trying to argue against your decisions on your tree and build mechanics, because ultimately it comes down to playstyle preference and what nodes you take before other nodes, I've structured this guide primarily around the ease of being able to gear it, which mostly comes down to the choice of going jewel-based, or not. Fact is (at the moment), gearing around jewels rather than around Drillneck is far more difficult than making temporary decisions like taking Cloth and Chain until you can fit a better pair of gloves in (as an example).

Ultimately, as far as the net expense goes, we'll just have to wait to see where jewel prices settle I guess, but it's easier to grab an extra purity to offset resistance differences imho.

The one thing I'll note is ignoring Poacher's Aim is wrong. Between Drillneck, Piercing Shots, and Poacher's Aim we see a net increase of 105% damage, 25% of which comes from Poacher's Aim.

Taking a look at the datamined jewel mods, we have:

- 9-13% increased chaos damage (prefix)
- 10-12% projectile damage (suffix)
- 10-12% area damage (suffix)
- 8-10% damage (suffix)
- 10-12% damage over time (suffix)

Meaning you would need a *PERFECTLY ROLLED* two-damage affix rare jewel to equate to Poacher's Aim (of course assuming you will go with resistance as one of the suffixes, as you've described).

And the way I understand damage calculations are rolled, your net dps ends up being less, since your cloud damage is calculated first off your projectile damage, then the generic damage, DoT, and Chaos damage modifiers apply afterwards. Obvious statement here but you're missing out on 13-15% projectile damage.

Math wise, this does make a damage difference. I mean, it's min-maxing crap, but still. Because of the nature of the change to Slower Projectiles, which is now multiplicative, and factors in *before* the damage over time. Whereas you are getting 30% more on 10-12% projectile damage, I'm seeing 30% more on 25% projectile damage, which starts to make a difference when you're dealing with higher base damage differences as the build progresses.

*EDIT:* So the calculation would work roughly as follows:

((Base damage + Increased Proj) * More Proj)) + (Chaos Damage + DoT + Area Damage) * (Conc Effect).

So let's say you're dealing 2,000 base damage, with 85% increased projectile damage, 30% more from slower projectiles, 60% chaos damage, 42% DoT, 20% increased AoE and 60% more from Conc.

((2000 + 85%) * 30%)) + (60% + 42% + 20%) * 60% = 17,085 damage, non-drillneck.

Compared to my Poacher's Aim setup of 100% proj, but 30% DoT

((2000 + 100%) * 30%)) + (60% + 30% + 20%) * 60% = 17,472 damage, Drillneck.

Now factor in 7 Frenzy charges (28% MORE)

Frenzy Non-Drillneck: 17,085 * 1.28 = 21,868
Frenzy Drillneck: 17,472 * 1.28 = 22,364

Net difference: Drillneck setup +495.36 dps

EDIT EDIT: Keep in mind that this will apply to the net difference in projectile damage versus other sources of damage. So if I have 105% projectile damage, and you end up with three jewels at 12% projectile damage (36%) and offset the other 79% with other sources of damage, the difference will become much more significant than 495/s

Lastly, as far as Acro/Phase Acro goes, rest assured I will be updating my guide with options you can use to invest in those earlier, if you so desire. And while the finished guide will of course have Acro/Phase, I have yet to take Acro, and I have suffered minimal deaths. I've even been farming Atziri without it. I mention earlier that it's my playstyle preference, because I'm a mechanically sound player and flat out don't need it, but I understand the various reasons why others might want it sooner (new to the game, experience, not able to use Lockstep, flat out playstyle preference (Acro/Phase Acro would allow you to drop a life flask, for example)), etc.

P.S. Sorry for the wall of text.

Ser, never excuse for a wall of text when you do such significant and redundant-free explanations to back up your tests and builds! Had to say this, as you explain the decisions and thoughts without belittling the one asking. Also, you reflect on your previous assumptions and can admit mistakes / look-overs.
Perhaps that's one of the main reasons I stick around here :D Ofcourse, MF-builds off your hands also contribute to that fact :D

Also ontopic, I'm still not set if I would run Acro and Phase for my rangerina, will see if I get to the point gear-wise where I could decide that :) Reskill points come cheap, since we plan our build and quests + some regrets offer alot of respec options. If I start the very first character in new leagues, the all res is kinda always taken. It helps simplifying gear decision as one main defense is already taken care of, and else all those respec points would go to waste anyways.

If we would happen to get our hands on a +1 curse item, would you run Vuln + TempChains or do you favor something else?

And, am I right assuming that a +1 arrow quiver will not increase damage, just the spread of the cloud?