[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

I was going to apologize for taking 10 years to reply to you (because I took an extra 45 minutes to edit the above post with calculations to provide details about why Drillneck is better than Jewels in terms of min-maxing, even without the Pierce gem)... then I looked at the timestamp and saw it was only 7 minutes since you posted.

Lel.

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Chronodroid wrote:

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

Why thank you! =)

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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.

I honestly find that I tend to do a lot of respec point usage now, even while levelling, because I like to min-max my decisions as much as possible. For example in early levelling when I bee-line for the Duelist Regen, I'll pick up the crappy 4% life out of the Thick Skin cluster, then spend a respec point moving it into Blood Drinker the moment I get access.

Heck, I might even temporarily take Charisma to run a Purity aura early, then spec out of it into life nodes, then spec *back* into it in the final build. Probably. =)

Anyway, I'm much like you, I don't particularly feel like I need Acro/Phase, so it's one of the last things I'll add in my build. But that also depends what the final monster tuning is like, particularly for map bosses. I might feel in the final version of 2.0 that it's actually more important.

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

I wouldn't bother with +1 curse for this build at all. There's no passives nearby to get it, and no corruption available anywhere than on an Amulet, which takes away IIR. Windscream takes away Goldwyrm, Dream Fragments takes away an Andvarius, and Dark Thoughts takes away a Jewel slot better served with something else.

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

It will decrease damage if you're using Drillneck, since you will be losing 10% pierce chance, and cloud damage cannot overlap, at the price of getting slightly better cloud radius, which is not required.

Ty very much for the +3 crafting clarification!

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Skip511 wrote:

Ty very much for the +3 crafting clarification!

You're welcome! Make sure you check the inverse crafting calculation on page 2 as well, a reply to Malone I believe it was.

How about dropping the duelist part of the tree entirely and going acro and taking thrill killer + dreamer and some evasion and life nodes from scion area? Would diminish the evasion quite a bit but at least the build would be more tanky

I'm Running PA in the beta too. Not really going for MF at the moment, I'm finding trading so painful it isn't really worth it, and haven't really got the gear to do it anyway. If I can I will run a bit more MF though, just for fun.
Not using a drillneck, and am unlikely too unless I find one! I am going the jewels option and using a rare defensive quiver (99 life, Tri-res) which makes gearing nice and easy. Nobody ever wants defensive quivers so they are normally cheap, got mine for 1c.

I'm using Blood Dance boots for charges and life regen. Been attempting to corrupt some for a frenzy charge, but no luck yet. Have got an interesting temp chains pair, and I run my frenzy - gmp - Curse on Hit - vulnerability setup in my boots, so if I could get a +1 curse ammy I could run a nice dual curse setup.
I'm still on a 4l atm, absolutely no luck linking the thing (And took a load of jewellers to 6s). I did get given a free +3 bow though, so can't complain!
No empower either, so I'm running culling strike for a bit of extra damage, though maybe should use in aoe for clear speed. the culling is handy on bosses though.

Basically, it works pretty well. I do play a bit loose so die a bit, never have got used to the trapper style of play, and end up standing still too much. Started using a decoy totem which is helping though. A bit more damage will help so I melt the packs before they get to me, currently at about 10k dps, still need to level up PA some more, once I get lvl 19 I'll probably vaal it, can't see me getting it to lvl 20 anyway before wipe.
I can see how strong it would be if I ever do manage to 5/6l the bow and get hold of an empower though.

Might well be my first build when 2.0 hits live. Though probably will just Ice Crash like everyone else....

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Serleth wrote:

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endowfeww wrote:

Does IIR gem work with PA clouds?

Yes.

Thx. I was confused by wiki info

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Since the increased Rarity of Items only applies when landing a killing blow

Since I saw your FB mf topic I was bothered with one question. Have you ever seen this topic? You always aim for something like 20iiq/300+iir but from tolo's testing it seems like not only 20iiq/200iir is sweet spot for us but it is even better. You would have to aim for 20iiq/340iir+ to see more rares and are we not all about this 2c recipe :P? You can see it visualized on the graph below I also imported values I wrote about.



If that is the case we could permanently drop 1 andvarius and be able to optimize defensive statistics on our gear easier. Maybe we could drop Cloth and Chain too and go faster for Acro or put skillpoints somewhere else or drop purity of X and get another aura (grace?) or level Clarity higher if that would make smoother gameplay. We could also limit ourself to 5l or switch IIR gem for something else (what?). Do not know yet since I am waiting for wipe, but it seem worth looking into.

Sorry if I made any language mistakes.

Edit: Decided to import values I wrote about.

This thread is quite enjoyable with the "Cloud" to "Butt" Chrome extension.

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Absolutis wrote:

How about dropping the duelist part of the tree entirely and going acro and taking thrill killer + dreamer and some evasion and life nodes from scion area? Would diminish the evasion quite a bit but at least the build would be more tanky

Yeah you could, but the reason I go to the Duelist area is for regen, to offset the Blood Rage degen. All it would mean is that you would want to generate your Frenzy charges manually, or alternately be more on top of your flask usage.

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Carlovski wrote:

I'm Running PA in the beta too. Not really going for MF at the moment, I'm finding trading so painful it isn't really worth it, and haven't really got the gear to do it anyway. If I can I will run a bit more MF though, just for fun.

still need to level up PA some more, once I get lvl 19 I'll probably vaal it, can't see me getting it to lvl 20 anyway before wipe.

Yeah, beta trading is unfortunately terrible, but part of the strength of running a build like this or my FB variant is that you can still net 0.5ex / hr without trading a single thing, just off recipes, raw currency drops, vendoring rares, 6S's, chrome vends, etc. So it even works reasonably well self-found in order to pull in the materials to craft gear =)

I did the exact same thing with my PA gem actually lol. I was just levellng a bunch of PAs to 19 then corrupting them. Got lucky on my 2nd attempt.

@endowfeww: Yeah, I might actually go edit the wiki later because this is the relevant portion:

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Since patch 1.0.6, the bonus from this gem applies to enemies killed by degeneration or damage over time effects

The appropriate way to read it now is not that a hit is required to get rarity to apply, but whatever damage is the one that kills gets that player's rarity applied to it, regardless whether from it's a hit or degenerative damage.

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aelm wrote:

Since I saw your FB mf topic I was bothered with one question. Have you ever seen this topic? You always aim for something like 20iiq/300+iir but from tolo's testing it seems like not only 20iiq/200iir is sweet spot for us but it is even better. You would have to aim for 20iiq/340iir+ to see more rares and are we not all about this 2c recipe :P? You can see it visualized on the graph below I also imported values I wrote about.

MF Graph an values

Values gotten from 100 Hillock runs:
20iiq/202iir - 2 uniques (0.33%), 85 rares (14.07%) of 604 total items dropped.
20iiq/302iir - 2 uniques (0.33%), 83rares (13.76%) of 603 total items dropped.

If that is the case we could permanently drop 1 andvarius and be able to optimize defensive statistics on our gear easier. Maybe we could drop Cloth and Chain too and go faster for Acro or put skillpoints somewhere else or drop purity of X and get another aura (grace?) or level Clarity higher if that would make smoother gameplay. We could also limit ourself to 5l or switch IIR gem for something else (what?). Do not know yet since I am waiting for wipe, but it seem worth looking into.

Sorry if I made any language mistakes.

Edit: Decided to import values I wrote about.

That's actually a very interesting topic and something to consider, though there's a gap in that data between 20/200 and 20/300 which leads me to believe that there's actually a spot somewhere between that would see greater effect for us.

But unfortunately, I don't think 604 items dropped is honestly a large enough sample size to be able to definitively say how much RNG was a factor, considering the difference in unique drops was identical but the difference in rare drop percentage is only 0.3%.

Thanks for the link though. I'll see if I can dig up anything else on the matter.

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Serleth wrote:

But unfortunately, I don't think 604 items dropped is honestly a large enough sample size to be able to definitively say how much RNG was a factor, considering the difference in unique drops was identical but the difference in rare drop percentage is only 0.3%.

I understand that this values are far from being 100% true but I do believe that they are pretty solid. Especially when other players got similar results.

Even if we consider that 20/300 was bad RNG and we will get median of 20/200 and 20/400, we get 92 rare items for 20/300 which is 15,26%. It is 1,19% more rares then with 20/200. I do understand that this logic is not ideal but unless we get specific information about mf from GGG we will never be sure. IMHO in this situation faster map clear speed would be better if we could achieve it by sacrificing andvarius or/plus iir gem.

On the other hand it is worth remembering that magic/rare/unique mobs have bonus to IIQ/IIR (can not find any info about even estimated values), so this results tolos got would be most accurate with additional unique mob iiq/iir when it comes to white mobs we encounter on Maps.

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Serleth wrote:

Thanks for the link though. I'll see if I can dig up anything else on the matter.

Happy to be able to contribute something to the topic ;)