[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

You seem really frustrated by RNG challenges - but those have always? - or nearly always - been part of the challenge grind.

Hell - you can solve the RNG factor by watching Global/Trade 820 - if on the way to the ridiculous "End Game Grind" challenges you fail to pick up the RNG-gated challenges - well, you can easily purchase them and/or just join a suitable Global 820 group.
===============
Last league I complained about how long it took for the end-game grinds.

This league, it's even worse.

Anyhow, I really don't think that this league's and last league's challenges are at-all on target.

Because, 40/40 now caters to those who are able to play just way more than the average person (who may in fact be quite skilled) can afford to invest.

I'd like to see challenges as they were in Essence League - difficult but accomplishable even for players who cannot afford to invest huge amounts of time into the game.
===================
There's a difference between a game being fun and a game being a time-sink.

A great game would be fun whenever you played it - rewarding play throughout.

A not-so-great game is fun initially, but becomes a grind after awhile - no longer very fun - more of a chore.

WoW was in the not so fun category.

And PoE is now firmly in that territory as well.
=================
Last league 40/40 sucked - and it's worse this league.

Bring back Essence League 40/40 difficulty! Because getting 40/40 in Essence was fun.

Solve the post-40/40 problem by making other content - e.g., races, more rewarding.
===============
In this league it seems to me that we have a watered down Breach/Talisman/Prophecy league. Using the corresponding League Stones is not quite as powerful as the original league.

Meanwhile, the corresponding end-game challenges for each of those leagues is far, far worse than the original leauge.

50 Rigwald kills - are you kidding me? - is anyone in the entire game going to get that?

A shit-ton of Council kills - LoLWut? - Council drops suck now, so there's no incentive to do this grind. And good luck purchasing Council "fragments" or farming them on your own - and even better luck finding a group for Council kills - not happening outside of a guild setting IMO.

Prediction - very few 40/40 players will pursue the Council kills.
==============
Which leaves us with 100 Atziri kills - ugh. But at least you can level gems while doing this.

40 Guardian kills - reasonable. But you may need to purchase a bunch of T16 maps.

100 Breachlord kills - worse than in the Breach league - possibly much worse. Because League stones don't seem to replicate the full effect of the original league. So you now need a crap-ton of Breachlord kills in a league with watered-down breaches.

100 Uber Itzaro kills - hell, why not 1000, or 6000 or something equally ridiculous - very few people enjoy labs. But this league, Council and Talisman end-game grinds really seem impossible - so you're stuck doing 100 lab runs - more if you die. Which means that you'll want to roll a really great lab-running toon - and a great clear speed toon - and a great Uber/Shaper toon - ven diagram - empty.

So roll a bunch of toons for the 40/40 challenges or make due with suboptimal toons - which will probably take more time than biting the bullet and rolling optimal toons.
===================
GGG didn't post 40/40 completion statistics for last league. But I suspect it was far lower than in Essence.

For this league... it's going to be even worse.
===============
GGG needs to make money - and they do this through game transactions - which increases, I suspect, with game participation.

This league - participation is going to crater earlier than last league - as the grim reality of massively time-sink based challenges sink in.

Once more - fun does not equal time sink - fun equals new/exciting content - GGG is way off target this league.
===============
And yeah - I get it that few players pursue 40/40 - but turning 40/40 into an 8+ hour a day commitment for the duration (or nearly so of the league) - is carrying the difficulty of the challenges way overboard.

I like being able to bring-back past league mechanics - and league stone drop rates are pretty high making it possible to run 3-stone maps all the time.

Which is why I'm having fun so far.

I'm playing way more intensively at the moment than I have in prior leagues - I'm on the cusp of having very nice end-game Whispering Ice gear - which theoretically will enable me to kill all content in the game.

In particular, I just spent 9ex on an 800+ Energy Shield chest-piece, which I now need to 6-socket and 5-link - hoepfully this will be done in a day or two.

Once I've 5-linked my new chest - my WI toon is good-to-go for all content.

We'll see though - I'm an average-skilled player - so Shaper/Uber Atziri/HotGM/Vaal Temple may be a bit out-of reach for me, at least not without some practice.

Moreover, even if I can kill everthing with my WI-toon - I'm going to need to roll one or maybe two more toons for 40/40 - one for really fast clear speed (HoWA is planned for this) and one for running labs (I suck at dodging traps so I want some brain-dead capable lab toon - not sure what qualifies for this now though).
====================
If anyone is looking into rolling a Whispering Ice toon - I highly recommend it - for the most part the toon is really tanky.

The drawbacks for this toon are:
1) It relies on much of the same gear as HoWA - so a lot of your gear will be very expensive;
2) Clear speed isn't great - it's not bad, but it's not nearly as good as HoWA;
3) Icestorm makes it hard to see ground effects - so you'll need to move back after attacking an unknown-buffed magic pack in case you've just killed a bunch of bearer mobs;
4) Icestorm hit really often. Which means that you can easily stack a ton of corrupted blood debufs on you very, very fast. These are no problem if the mob you're attacking is still alive - you'll simply leach through the damage - yet, once all nearby mobs die, you've got to be on-your-toes, quaffing a staunching flask quickly or otherwise dying.

So... WI is really tanky - but requires that you pay attention to what's going on, even in T10/T11 maps.
====================
I decided to try for "The Doctor" divination card drops this league.

So I shaped my map for Burial Chamber and Spider Forest shaped runs, leaving all other T10/T11 maps open.

But with Zana 6 - simply alching and running all my Shaped T10/T11 maps - is unsustainable - I'm far, far from being able to maintain my map pool with alching and running - I'd need to chisel and probably drop a fragment or two to avoid depleting my T10/T11 maps.

I haven't seen any other posters complaining about the difficulty of maintaining maps this league - so it may be down to the particular maps I've shaped - it's possible that the mobs which spawn in Shaped BC/Shaped SF simply do not drop as many maps as, for example, shaped Strands.

It's known - or at least strongly suspected - that humaniod mobs drop more maps than other types of mobs - so the Shaped BC/SF low map drop rate may be down to bad mob-type spawns - or bad intrinsic map drop rates for these maps - or maybe GGG stealth-nerfed map drop rates this league because you can run Shine/Nemisis stones for more mobs and thus more chances of map drops.


Is anyone running Shaped Strands yet this league? If so, how are your map drop rates? Are you able to maintain your Shaped Strands map pool just by alching and going?
=================
In other news, I'm continuing work on my chaos-spam simulator.

For those who don't know - the simulator attempts to determine the likelihood of generating gear with stats you choose simply by spamming chaos orbs over and over.

Currently, the simulator handles Int-based chest-pieces quite well. But with a bit of work I can handle a few other types of items.

Unfortunately, the simulator relies on data-mined drop weightings... which might very well be illegal to share without GGG's approval. So I reluctant to make the simulator available for download.

But - if there's enough interest in - say +2 bow simulations or maybe other gear - I'm willing to invest a bit more time to simulate those results.

But, until I see what's happening in 3.0 - I don't think I want to invest too much time into the simulator program - it may well become totally obsolete come 3.0.

Sometime between now and the 3.0 Beta I'm going to make a post that essentially amounts to this reply, but with a heavier focus on grinds.

Breach was pushing my threshold of grindy tolerance. I didn't have as much of a problem with 10k map tiers, because at least you could accelerate the process as long as you were doing T11+ maps. Hell, the Guardian maps took care of 640/10000 (6.4%) while they would only cover 4% of the Tri-League T6+ this time around.

Like you mention, Essence had three grinds, and some RNG. Breach had four grinds, if you include the 10K tiers.

Legacy has five. Four, plus the 1k 3League T6+.

The only thing Essence league really had that was proper RNG related (things that you could actually expect to have to BUY as a more casual player, sub-180/240 hour investment) was maaaaaaybe the Echoing shrine (which you could force through running Domination maps), and possibly something like quad-Essence monster kill. But that's more build-dependent than RNG.

Same could be said of the Breach league challenges. Except for the splinters from Chayula one (which I liked that you couldn't buy) and the Unique box (ugh), there was nothing really RNG-related that you wouldn't eventually accomplish through regular play.

Hell, even the Divination card challenge in Breach: that was the first league I can recall in recent history where by opening it up to just completing numbered sets rather than specific cards, you could actually farm the entire challenge yourself reasonably. I only had to buy one Chains That Bind card, and even then I only did so to complete the challenges earlier. A few more Crema maps and I would've completely SSF'd a div card challenge for the first time.

As far as the grinds go, even with the additional end-game grind with Breach, if you had a build and the skill capable of doing it you could finish them quite quickly: 10 Uber Atziri, 40 Shaper Guardians, 100 Breachlords, done. Which is why I think they added the additional 10k map tiers: you could either choose to ACTUALLY grind it out all league, or speed-farm high level maps and destroy the fast boss kills and then you were done.

Legacy's a much different story. As you point out, ALL the end-game grind challenges are either actual grinds, or straight up currency sinks (Rigwald kills last I checked were 50c each to get ilvl 75+ T3 Talismans x 5, to give you the greatest possibility for return on investment, or 2500 chaos).

And THEN there's the 1,000 Tri-League T6+ on top of it.

I don't mind "pay to win" challenges as long as they're blatantly that: identify uniques, redeem specific div cards, etc.

Legacy? No.

Thankfully, the Encounters challenges aren't RNG at all, but actually brute-forceable due to the nature of league stones. So that's cool.

But otherwise, they brought back all the RNG they possibly could from previous leagues.

* Corrupt the four T1 Essences.
* Touch shrines (I've never had a problem with this, but more casual players say they never see an Echoing shrine in normal leagues).
* Tormented spirits (mitigated by the fact you didn't require possession, this time).
* Rogue Exiles (normally never a problem, so that's okay)
* Invaders (Good luck finding Judgement Apparatus)
* Nemeses (same as Shrines, some people never see Inner Treasure)
* Perandus Chests (in the entire MONTH I spent in Perandus league proper, I never saw Safe, Locker or Archives. I had to buy all three).
* Talisman bosses (nevermind that it takes a minimum 25 maps to even get a CRACK at a T2 boss, this was another one I spent an entire month trying to complete, and after 40+ T2 boss kills I still never had Legion of Lost Souls; had to buy it).
* Prophecy chains (indirect P2W / time sink: all the backtracking to avoid sealing, buying coins to proc the prophecies. Definitely doable in a normal time frame, but more importantly it takes away from time you could be investing in the end-game grinds OR T6+ Tri Leagues)
* Beyond Demons (200 Beyond Boss Encounters later, no Abaxoth. Bought him.)
* Warband Leaders (not terrible, but still RNG based on which boss you get in the map. In Warbands itself, this was straight up RNG).

Now, eliminating stuff that I feel most players will complete over a ~200 hour investment of straight playing the game (Shrines, Spirits, Exiles, Nemeses, Prophecy, Warbands), that leaves you with Essences, Invaders, Perandus and Talisman.

That's four direct RNG challenges that could very easily slap you in the face, in particular Perandus and Talisman. And Talisman on its own, especially if you want to try to get Rigwald kills yourself (50? LOL) is inherently a grind.

I mean yeah, you can buy your way into all of these, like you can most challenges historically, and that's fine, but instead of having one or two RNG challenges they brought back everything they could that had a legitimate element of RNG to it.

Further, due to the nature of leaguestones, rather than playing in each of the proper leagues, you either have to be lucky enough to drop the stone you need or you have to go buy it. (This is only an issue once you really start burning through specific stones to try get the challenge, like Perandus).

It's RNG behind RNG. And that's the real frustrating part.

Then there's the five grinds on top of it.

They pushed me out of 40/40 this league. Mostly with the grinds, because I'm fine buying my way into challenges, but four grinds was enough. Five is ridiculous. Regardless of the reasoning behind it (profit or otherwise).

*****
As for the Shaped Strand thing, I went straight into after I finished the Brinerot kills. Sustain was fine, for how long I played. Started with twenty maps, ended up with twenty maps when I quit.

After all the talk of HOWA last league, I decided to give it a go this league. Easy, cheap +3 bows and legacy Goldwyrms available (+30 IIQ for 2.5ex? Yes please!) If I use the currency savings on the +3 bow to buy a legacy Goldwyrm... I'm absolutely second guessing myself now! Hell, there's even IIQ gems, for crying out loud.

I've been playing archers for so long that switching to a playstyle like HOWA was a major challenge, but I'll admit I'm really starting to enjoy it now. My toon isn't even close to optimized and I'm still turning mobs into a fine red mist, tough rares melt pretty quick, and even tough bosses don't last very long.

Seems that the price of endgame gear is much higher than normal this league. Normally I expect the price to spike early league, then settle down a fair bit. This time, the peak isn't dropping very fast. Of course, there are 30% more people playing 2 weeks in than the last few leagues, so perhaps demand is up. Also, currency generation is significantly boosted - legacy variants / leaguestones sell for enough to boost currency generation by at least 50% for me, anyway. More currency means people are willing to spend more on average.

I haven't seen anywhere near the amount of currency market manipulation this time, although item market manipulation seems to be more rampant. Might be due to the higher population again, I guess. Much easier to detect and avoid, though.

I'm even considering holding off on Mass Effect for a while, given the reviews I've seen so far, and putting more time into the league instead.

I think you'll really enjoy HoWA. As soon as I 6-link the nice ES chest I recently purchased, I'll start on a HoWA toon.