[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

Now that the league is about to end, my chaotic darling MrsReagan has assembled some nice gear:



She will reach 89 probably tomorrow - I have got another lvl 89 char, but none higher. Considering that I have invested quite some time into her, this outcome is hugely below what Serleth described above. Level 88 on day 4? :-) Well, on weekdays I usually only play for 3-5 hours, but that's most likely not all there is to it.

Also, I don't even get close to the numbers stated above in respect to ex per hour.

And usually I am fine with that. I attribute the results in mfing to the slow pace at mapping. I like that pace, I'm comfortably listening to audio books while mfing. I assume that the slow leveling also derives from that and also from the simple fact that i die much too often - no miracle here, I could play less damage-prone and pay better Attention. Sometimes I choose to, sometimes I don't.

But a skype talk with some guy from this forum touched the matter of how I might start another char for the next league, and I simply assumed that I would, for the sake of getting to know other builds and their requirements, change to some energy shield build, thus getting better at pricing finds and selling them.

I came to the conclusion that I don't want to, mostly, because as of right now, I haven't even touched a lot of content with this build. Of course, I could resume playing in standard, but then I'd miss some of the new content. So I'll play another CA-Rogue, and will try to reach endgame faster.

How, though?

How do you advance fast? I'm not asking the gems or passive tree, though. Do you run solo or pair up? Do you form groups? Do you kill only rare or blue bmobs? Do you advance as fast as possible or try so stay in an optimal relation to the mosterlevel around your? what would that be?

Thanks for answering!

Is this correct setup for a 6l without MF gems?

Caustic Arrow - Rapid Decay - Void Manipulation - Concentrated Effect - Empower - Pierce/Slower Projectiles

If it is what is better, pierce or slower projectiles? Pierce has lower mana cost multiplier and does not reduces projectile speed, so does that mean its better?

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Donnerdrummel escribió:

So I'll play another CA-Rogue, and will try to reach endgame faster.

How, though?

How do you advance fast? I'm not asking the gems or passive tree, though. Do you run solo or pair up? Do you form groups? Do you kill only rare or blue bmobs? Do you advance as fast as possible or try so stay in an optimal relation to the mosterlevel around your? what would that be?

Thanks for answering!

These answers are coming from the prospective of 'Race Mode.' I enjoy the competitive races in PoE and here are some of the basic tips used in solo events. Stay under leveled for a zone, there is no experience penalty when you are three levels under current zone level. The full formula for this is {Safe XP Gain = (3+(Character Level/16)}. So levels 1-15 you can be three levels under, levels 16-31 you can be 4 levels under, etc. If you are not comfortable constantly being at the edge of effective experience gain, just aim to keep ~2 levels under the zone.

In races, rare monsters are not worth it. They have too much life, are generally more dangerous, and the xp of one rare is only a little greater than the xp of a magic monster (and magic monsters show up in packs!) Kill large packs of normal monsters(think similar to shrine density) or if they are in your way in narrow passages, most if not all the magic monsters you encounter, and skip most of the rares.

Being able to kill via Area of Effect skills also helps progress really quickly. The last two seasons or so the go to skills were firestorm/traps/totems for spells (either hit a large area, or could continue to kill for you while you advanced forward), Leap Slam/Sweep/Cleave for melee (large area, or area while moving), and for ranged it was mostly Shrapnel Shot/Blast Rain (100% pierce for effective area, or just big area damage)

When it comes to party events or a group of friends, it is usually safer and most of the time faster. You can split up in act 2 (from town some player left, the others right), Act 3 (mostly to rush the Gardens/Library WP, while the rest of the group goes towards Piety), and Act 4 (Some to one dream WP, some to the other). Public parties are a bit hit or miss, but even then I will join public parties to go through the Dreams of Act 4.

The general consensus when solo racing is each act should take about 30 min, some will be faster others longer, but 30 is a good average to strive for in competitive racing events. When starting a new league this is not as important, you will likely do the new content (I don't know how long the average low level Prophecy will take), complete master missions, vendor and trade, etc. I've not tried to match this 'rule of thumb' with Caustic Arrow, but I found I was making it through the acts at a decent clip while trying to remember and apply some racing strategies.

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mulerin0 escribió:

If it is what is better, pierce or slower projectiles? Pierce has lower mana cost multiplier and does not reduces projectile speed, so does that mean its better?

Pierce has the higher potential for Min/Max in a Caustic Arrow build. Less mana cost as you mention, but you can potentially gain three passive points and still reach 100% pierce change. Pierce is my recommendation if you are looking to run the non-MF version. (Assuming no changes to either gem at the launch of 2.3)

ty!

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Donnerdrummel escribió:

So I'll play another CA-Rogue, and will try to reach endgame faster.

How, though?

How do you advance fast? I'm not asking the gems or passive tree, though. Do you run solo or pair up? Do you form groups? Do you kill only rare or blue bmobs? Do you advance as fast as possible or try so stay in an optimal relation to the mosterlevel around your? what would that be?

Chrono covered most of it, but I'd like to add this:

It also comes down to just raw experience: knowing what quests you can skip, what quests you might want to come back for later, and what order to hit things in, etc.

I think 30 minutes per act is probably a bit aggressive for your average player. Even I don't go through the acts that quickly (that's partly because I kill a lot of rares, but also because I like to keep my character relatively in-line with the zone level, so I'll grind Cruel and Merciless ledges, then Merciless docks).

I would say if you're averaging 45-60 minutes per act, you're going at a reasonable pace. I end up at Merciless Docks typically in one day (depending on how involved this thread gets), which is 10.5 acts in, putting me at roughly 45 minutes per act on average (I always put in 8 full hours on Day One. I like to be as close to maps as possible on the first day so I can start running a shop immediately on Day Two).

There's also http://poetools.com/experience-penalty/ which will simplify your maximum XP gain, but it's a bit out of date in terms of accurately depicting current zone levels per zone name, so just pay attention to the actual zone level # range that tells you what zone level # you need to be in order to retain 100% xp gain.

@ChronoExile: Thanks for the spot on the missing (list) tag. I've reworded the Distillate answer a bit, for a trim more brevity, and added a note about what flask to remove.

Now, time for some more Overwatch.

Regarding the 20% nerf to Scion's Deadeye notable revealed from today's JSON data release:

Nothing changes. We go from 100% pierce to 80% pierce, which is still more than enough. We gain two-three passive points with 2.3 (haven't analyzed the tree yet), so it's guaranteed we'll make up for that damage difference.

In other words, barring the patch notes announcing a nerf to the skill itself, nothing changes to the final stages of this build for 2.3.

That said:

I'm going to be testing Flameblast Prolif again in 2.3, and see if that build got resurrected with the buff to the gem.

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Serleth escribió:

Nothing changes. We go from 100% pierce to 80% pierce, which is still more than enough. We gain two-three passive points with 2.3 (haven't analyzed the tree yet), so it's guaranteed we'll make up for that damage difference...

Assuming un-corrupted Drillneck doesn't the build go from 100%(110%) -> 90%. 50% (lower path of Piercing Shots Wheel) + 30% (Ascendant's Deadeye) + 10% (Drillneck Implicit)? I know the tooltip display is a little weird with some of the pierce information, so I might be wrong on this.

I'm looking forward to seeing the final 2.3 passive tree and the interesting new options available with the 'Path of the Ranger.'

Also best in getting a prolif build where you want it, those builds were a lot of fun. Fire Trap prolif in the heyday of that support was great fun to play.

Hi Guys,

I have only skimmed thorugh several pages of this thread (and read the OP of course) and and can see it has sort of a "community" of its own and is very well maintained and up to date. Thank you Serleth and others, this guide has what many others lack, as their creators move on to the "next best thing" when another temp league starts, leaving the thread desolate, with a few desperate posters begging for an update :)

I think I will stick around.

I have never played a full-fledged MF character in my days with PoE since 2012 and I also have never played CA. This being said, I have never been able to accumulate wealth to buy top tier items, or complete item-based challenges, and towards the end of a league I tend to desperately grind for currency to buy my way into boss kills, map clears, etc. required to complete the desired number of challenges (i.e. I am doing it right now but from the looks of it I'm going to be able to hit 36).

I would like to change that and play a char that will let me fund everything I want, save for maybe mirrored gear. I don't play on Standard, only SC temp leagues.

So let me jump on the bandwagon of happy MF-ers, I'll be watching this thread closely in the days before Prophecy starts and, who knows, maybe be able to even contribute something.

Thank you again for your passion.
Now back to reading.

EDIT: I think in the OP in the Gem secion where you talk about the Portal gem you mean running out of Portal Scrolls, not Wisdoms ;)

Welcome to the CA/MF community Jadran.

If you follow Serleth's guide and put in a reasonable amount of playtime you'll definitely accumulate a bunch of wealth.

How you spend this wealth is up to you.

You can either fund some other character you've always wanted to play but couldn't afford - and/or you can complete as many challenges in the league as you want.

Serleth has done a tremendous service to the POE community, documenting an extremely strong build that will generate a bunch of currency quickly.

Moreover, Serleth has fostered camaraderie - other threads seem plagued by one-upmanship, trolling, antagonism, etc. This is in stark contrast to Serleth's CA thread!

To me this is the best feature of this thread... nice folks contributing insightful posts while debating issues rationally without ad hominem attacks - for the most part - sometimes a random Internet troll posts but this is rare and the troll is generally put down quickly by the CA community.

A random tip which you may find useful next league...

I've found that trying to self-craft flasks is almost always not nearly worth the currency.

Instead, purchase a flask with the affixes you want and then just dump baubles into it until it's 20% quality. You'll save a ton of currency taking this approach.

In most cases you can purchase flasks with perfect affixes for 1C. Rolling such a flask on your own will usually blow through stacks and stacks of alts. Which is especially costly in a new league when you could be selling those alts for chaos and then using the chaos to purchase very, very cheap exalts, which you can then use to purchase early-league gear.