[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

For those of you who've participated in World of Warcraft (WOW) raids, you're no doubt familiar with the dreaded shout from the healers: "OOM!" - meaning, out of mana.

Shortly after hearing "OOM," the main tank dies and, well, it all quickly goes tits up.
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Playing on my HoWA toon, reminded me somewhat of my WOW days. For you see, my HoWA toon survives by leeching life while doing damage. Mana is at a premium, and so I leech for that too.

In the hectic too-and-fro of breach combat, sometimes I unwittingly shoot off a bunch of spectral claws sort of at random, not really aimed at mobs. When under Vaal Haste, this can be quite a few claws... and, before you know it...

OOM!

KEK. When out of mana in a breach, the half-life of my character is something under 1 second.

Well I spent a bit of time hacking on NeverSink's filter to reduce clutter.

Here's what loot typically looks like for me using the stock NeverSink filter (I'd say that this is average clutter - it frequently gets much worse):



And here's what it looks like using my hacked version



To reduce clutter I eliminated scrolls, non-unique flasks and all normal/magic crafting bases (except the really good ones like Steel Rings). I also removed font size increase for most items.

Visibility is greatly improved. I think I can run breaches with loot display on now. Using NeverSink's, the screen would often become so cluttered that I'd have to switch off loot display just to see what was going on.

An added advantage of having a wholly customized filter is that anything that shows up now, I can just pick up; if I'm not interested in it, it no longer appears on screen.

On the stats posted today, anyone have any idea why merc Submerged Passage and Lunaris 1 are so popular? SP seems like the most inconvenient area to be farming/leveling and the Deep Dweller quest is short enough that it shouldn't ever warrant creating another SP instance. I guess Ledge spammers would be adding some SP instances, but they'd be adding twice as many Ledges. Also, it's Lunaris 2 that has the chance at a nice card for people who want to stop to level around that point.

Apirant's Trial is listed without mentioning difficulty. Did they lump them all together?

I'm shocked to learn that I'm not the only person to ever die at all to Minotaur. I had way more trouble with him than other guardians and it seemed to be the one the most people on Flist, forums and Youtube were insisting was trivial and by far the easiest for all their builds.

After upgrading my chest somewhat, I respeced from an ES-heavy tree to an offensive oriented tree.

I went from

10.2K ES and 24K hideout DPS (golem out and Wrath up) to
8.8K ES and 37.5K hideout DPS

My gear isn't good at all so I was pleasantly surprised to see my DPS climb into the upper 30K's.

The tree I'm using is very similar to C9's except that I speced out of some projectile damage nodes at the ranger start in order to grab Forces of Nature and the nice 6% elemental penetration.
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAIBAAHRAecDHgX5DY0OSBEPES8RgRGWFLAV1xXwFyYZihnXGlUbyB9BIuoj0yo4Kwosvy5TNj026DsNO-M8vkMxRPtGaUwtTP9OKlT-VYVWSFZjVvpaGluvXGtd8l9qX3BhIWOnZAltbG8ndct6hH6vf8aCHoNthEiExYTvhq6IQooojRmNfo9Gj2CP-pAKk5WVzJcGmmqboZu1n8ujiqXLpwinMKyYrTOv67VIvea-p8HFwzPDOsNtxKLNmM_d0NDTb9gk2NXZX9rB3UbdjOAS53Tn6ujW6mLrFOtj7BjtP-4O7-vxivfX-TP5Y_zF

And this is my not-so-great gear:


The belt needs int, and the rings need WED. Gear upgrades are a pain because most of my gear has only 1 resist instead of 2 - but prices for CI gear and in particular CI gear with int, are very expensive.

At any rate, I highly recommend C9's tree or the variant I'm using above. DPS is very nice.

C9's tree features the dual-wield attack speed nodes - these are nice on their own and are even better when Ancestral Protector is out; furthermore, the attack speed nodes nicely boost whirling blades, making instance navigation all the faster.

At the advice of C9 I'm also getting projectile speed on my extra jewel sockets. I'm level 91 now and just have one spare jewel socket but if I level to 94 I'll pick up a 2nd socket which will provide a total of 16% increased projectile speed.

My guess about Submerged Passage and Lunaris 1 is people looking for corrupted areas.

Minotaur puts out physical damage; if your character copes well against physical via mitigation or leeching or both, it's really easy. Otherwise, it can take some time to work out the best tactics for the fight. For example, on my Ancestral Warchief toon, I found that the best way to fight him with a totem build is not to use Conc Effect, but instead continue using Inc AOE - this helps out enormously killing off his adds. With these tactics, Minotaur is roughly the same difficulty as other Guardians for my AW toon.

So, in light of Norse's post re: setting up chaining strands, I decided to Science.

All Return: X values indicate the differential from 10. So Return: +1 means I recovered 11 maps.

• 10 - just alc'd and ran'm. Return: +1
• 10 - 10% chisel, single+ packsize. Return: +1
• 10 - 15% chisel, single+ packsize. Return: 0
• 10 - 20% chisel, single+ packsize. Return: -1
• 10 - 15% chisel, double packsize, occasional Zana mod. Return: 0
• 10 - 10% chisel, double packsize, Onslaught on all. Return: 0
• 10 - 15% chisel, double packsize, mixed Zana mod. Return: -3
• 10 - 10% chisel, single+ packsize, additional mobs/quant sextants, Bloodlines on 7 . Return: +4

While not an exhaustive sample size, it appears as though I basically just got bit by RNG. One of two things here is probably true: either chiselling OR packsize rolls OR Zana mod is probably irrelevant.

Although it's likely that missing two of three of these would prove severely detrimental.

I will continue sciencing and report back.

Next:



Oh, and @Chrono, the discrepancy you no doubt notice from our two 9-sets is because I solo'd the same rolls to make it an even 10, because dammit.

Some clarification about Norse's post, as well.

He claims in the reddit post he sold 50ex of Strands, by running Strands. From what I can glean of a quick scan of the thread, it appears as though he ran a quad tab of strands, and then.... sold a quad tab of strands, and that he was generating an excess amount.

However, he seems to be failing to account for expenditure.

Math:

A quad tab is 576 maps.

He spent, so he claims, 3 journeymen and one apprentice around Strand, when you can only get two yellow and one white to reach. I'm assuming here he's accounting for reroll cost. That's 10c every three maps, or 1920c.

He then rolled Bloodlines on each map: 3c per map, or 1728 chaos.

He also 4x chiselled each map, or 1.3c per map, for an additional 768c

Shaped Strands presently sell for 4c, or 2340c.

In other words, he spent 4416c (80.29ex) on maps and sold 2340c (42ex) worth of refunds for a net deficit of -2076c, or -37.7ex

The only way he's generating a profit here is if he's consistently getting excess Strands. In otherwords, constantly refilling a quad tab, then selling the overflow.

Let's assume for argument's sake that the following possible scenarios, where we say he keeps the refunded map (no profit), and sells the excess:

* For every map he runs, he generates a refund +2
* For every map he runs, he generates a refund +1
* For every second map he runs, he generates a refund +1
* For every third map he runs, he generates a refund +1
* For every fourth map he runs, he generates a refund +1

The preceding scenarios (strictly in terms of excess Strand maps therefore generate, factoring in the 3.3c from sextants, 3c Bloodline mod, and 1.3c from chisels (7.63c per map), across 576 maps (4395c per quad tab) means:

* 4608c (83.78ex) - 4395c = +213c (+3.87ex)
* 2304c (41.89ex) - 4395c = -2091c (-38ex)
* 1152c (20.94ex) - 4395c = -3243c (-58.9ex)
* 768c (13.9ex) - 4395c = -3627c (-65.9ex)
* 576c (10.47ex) - 4395c = -3819c (-69.4ex).

Now obviously some of this cost is mitigated across the loot acquired through the map, but it really bothers me when someone says "I made 50ex selling Strands" when in reality, he was only making money if he was literally getting three Strand maps, per Strand run. Every time.

Which is unlikely.

He failed to consider everything, and it's lazy of him to be lauding this as a money-making technique, even if unintentionally, without presenting or factoring in all the information.

He would make a slight profit (factoring in 3.5c of raw currency, per map), but.... that's just kinda the regular map generation. And thus, imho, should not be accounted for in a presentation such as this.

That said, for interest sake, let's assume he makes on average 3.5c misc currency per map (6S drop, chaos orb, vaal orb, regret, some splinters, etc.)

That means his net expenditure per map is the net rolling cost of 7.63c - 3.5c generated = 4.13c.

This means, roughly, that in order to make a PROFIT running Strands, and selling excess Strands, you would need to generate a refund +1, on average, every map.

Again, unlikely.

But, it does illustrate that, at the very least, you can refund your expenditure for your own purposes of chaining Strands simply to REFUND a Strand, assuming that you do, in fact, get at least one return Strand on average per map.

Anyway.

Last side note, across those 70 Strand maps, I got about 13 T13 maps back, as well as a boatload of T9s and T10s I could use to work my way back to Strands if I ran out.

TL:DR here is that Strand chaining isn't likely profitable in and of itself, but it is sustainable, just like regular mapping is, and you also get speed-maps for leveling.

Interested?

Nice work so far on HowA. Keep'er up.