[3.2] The MagicBlaster - A detailed guide about MF'ing & Farming in general (with Kinetic Blast)

When you are running high tier maps (t14+), even more when you are carrying a party, you kinda feel the need to run the 6link setup for KB, because your goal is to always clear the whole screen with a single attack. That's cool and everything, the main problem (as discussed in other sections) is that KB has a massive mana cost, which becomes crazy in a 6link setup (about 70 mana per attack, with something like 4 attacks per second). You will NOT be able to sustain it with pure mana leech, that's just way out of the leech cap.
While clearing it's not a big deal, 'cause you are not attacking that often, so your mana pool has time to resplenish between to attacks; in pure single target scenario it become a problem though. You either use Barrage or you are going to miss some KB attacks, since you won't have enough mana. But now you have Barrage in a 4link setup, so you are going to sacrifice a lot of damage anyway.

With the usual items I was using (Sadima's and Esh's mirror) you should have about 180-200 ES to start with, with Discpline you should reach at least 500 ES. That's a really good resource pool to cast your skill.
Even without hitting anything, you can cast KB few times without problems; but the setup actually works because you can back up to 30 ES on hit, which just works too well with the skills we are using and allows us to deal with single targets without any problem.
Keep in mind that the point we are using to grab EB itself is the hybrid life/mana leech one we can respec (south of the duelist area), so we actually spend no points for this change.
We can also discuss the aura choices now. We have to use Discipline to make the setup work, we also need to use HoI since it's way too strong for clearing, and then we can also choose a 50% aura. In my opinion you should pick either the usual Wrath, Haste or Grace.
- Wrath is obiovusly the damage oriented option (you can get also really good Watcher's Eye bonus for Wrath, but they are very expensive, even more in combination with the ES on hit)
- Haste is on the utility side, since it provides some additional movement speed and some attack speed (Watcher's bonus include perma-Phasing and Onslaught on kill)
- Grace is also focused on utility, it provides lots of evasion (allowing us to only need a Jade flask to cap our evasion at 45k) and has also a Watcher's bonus that grants up to 15% movement speed.

Feel free to choose whatever you prefer; I suggest you to use the one that is affected by the Watcher's eye you are going to buy.


To run all those auras/buffs we need to have about 12% reduced mana reservation; we do not want to invest any passive point into it, so we have to link our auras with a level 4 Enlighten.
That gem is very expensive though (about 6ex at this moment); a better option is to buy a pair of Sadima's with the corruption that grants +1 level of socketed gems, this way we can use just a level 3 Enlighten (which is like 30 chaos).
With this solution, you can keep Discipline and the 50% aura linked with Enlighten, while you can keep HoI in a separate setup with CoH (you have to drop Onslaught though).
Our new setup becomes:
- Enlighten, Discpline, Wrath/Grace/Haste
- HoI, CoH, Poacher's Mark

If you do not care about the CoH setup, you can just put HoI in the goves with the other auras.

I've personally chosen Grace, since I do not really feel like I need Wrath for the damage and the extra utility is also really nice. This way I can free up a flask slot (which was a Stibnite flask) to use a Quicksilver flask, to gain the Onslaught I lost from the HoI setup.

Note: You want to buy Sadima's that already have the four linked colours you want, otherwise you need a Vorici level 8 to change the sockets/links/colours on a corrupted item.

MF stands for Magic Finding, generally speaking it means that you are adopting a playstyle or investing into something that should enhance your ability to find valuable items and the amount of loot you are going to get.
How it translates into PoE world? In this game you have two main attributes related to the MF: Increased Item Rarity (IIR) and Increased Item Quantity (IIQ); let's discuss them briefly, even though they are pretty self explainatory.

- IIR: the rarity tiers of items, from the most to the least common ones, are: Normal (white), Magic (blue), Rare (yellow) and Unique (orange/red). This stat literally increases the chances of you finding items that more "rare", (e.g. you are gonna find more unique items). Cool enough.

- IIQ: well, it seems pretty clear what this thing does. You drop more stuff, that's it. This stat affects every single item (currency, weapons, armours, cards, etc.), except maps. Maps are only affected by the IIQ bonus of the map you are running, not the the amount you provide from your items. This means that you are also gonna find more unique, which was the point of having a lot of IIR in the first place.

You should be able to understand by this point that IIQ is the stat you are looking for, since it provides the same effect of IIR, but with additional positive effects. You want items that give you as much IIQ as possible, if they also offer some IIR cool, otherwise it's not a big loss, even more 'cause 95% of the uniques in this game are worth less than an alchemy orb.

Note1: IIQ has diminishing returns (actual diminishing returns, it's literally something coded into the algorithm that calculates item drops), which means that if you lose some percentages of IIQ among your items, it's not the end of the world.

Note2: Magic monsters (blue) have additional 200% IIR and 600% IIQ, while rare monsters (yellow) have 1000% IIR and 1400% IIQ, unique monsters (orange/res) have 1000% IIR and 2850% IIQ.

At this point, people usually want to know which items are suited for this playstyle.
Easy enough, since there aren't many real options, let's highlight the main ones (for a complete list, you can check the wiki page IIQ items).

- Sadima's Touch gloves, up to 16% IIQ.
- Goldwyrm boots, up to 20% IIQ.
- Ventor's Gamble rings, up to 10% IIQ each (20% with two rings), Thief's Torment up to 16% IIQ or The Pariah with a white socket, which offers up to 15% IIQ (30% with two rings).
- Bisco's Leash or Perandus Blazon belt, respectively up to 5% and 8% IIQ.
- Bisco's Collar amulet, up to 50% IIQ (just against normal monsters), The Ascetic, up to 15% (with a magic item equipped) or a Shaper Amulet, which can roll up to 10% IIQ.
- Windripper bow, up to 15% IIQ.

You can clearly see that we do not have many choices. Moreover, most of those items do not really offer much more than that MF bonus.

Note1: Just to make it clear. Even though, at a first glance, Bisco's Collar may appear as the best MF item in the game by a massive margin, its real value is way lower than what it seems. While its effectivness totally depends on the actual composition of the map you are running, many tests (run by players, in the last few leagues) showed that its un-nerfed version (which went up to 100% IIQ) was giving about 20-25% effective IIQ, considering all the mobs present in a generic map. This means that the present version (up to 50% IIQ) is giving something like 10-15% effective IIQ, so it's not really that much better than a Shaper amulet/The Ascetic.

Note2: Since Bisco's affects only normal monsters, if you are adding zana mods to your map (for example beyond or bloodline), a Shaper amulet is going to outclass Bisco by a good margin. Moreover, all Beasts (yellow and red ones) drop a lot of stuff and they are not affected by Bisco. This means that a Shaper amulet is definitely your endgame goal and you should farm your way up towards it.

After what we already said, people usually want to know which builds are the most effective users of a MF setup.
Let's say that most builds in this game can be adapted into a MF playstyle, but currently just few of those are commonly played. We can divide them into two main classes, depending on how they travel the maps: Shield Charger and Runners.

- Builds using Shield Charge:
Ethereal Knives - 360° coverage, really great clearing capabilities but underwhelming single target damage. Probably the cheapest option.
Autobomber - This build uses Heralds skills that triggers themselves, fast enough at clearing with bad single target, expensive, but requires almost no action from the player.
Cospri's Discharger - Probably the fastest build, also good single target, but requires really high investment to be effective.

- Builds that run, using QotF:
Tornado Shot Windripper - Probably the best option overall, achieves the highest amount of IIQ, mantaining super fast clear speed and impressing single target damage, very expensive to build.
Kinetic Blast Wander - Similar to the previous one, offers less IIQ (not using Windripper) and performs best in indoor and narrow layouts, cheaper that the Windripper option.

This guide is not meant to teach you how to build and play each of these options, since there are many guides ot there for each of them.
I personally love the Kinetic Blast option; even though is not as good as a min/maxed Windripper character, it performs similarly and with a much lower budget. All the explosions are also way too satisfying to be ignored.

There's not a perfectly defined list of things you should gather, since they mostly depends on your playstyle (see categories in the preface). If you are playing this build (or any MF build) you need to speed up your playstyle though, since it's pretty reliant on keeping a good "momentum" and you cannot pick up every single item that drops on the ground.
For this reason, I highly suggest you to find your way into the third or the fourth category; I'm gonna actually discuss just those two.
First of all you need to setup your own item filter, the easiest way to do it is starting from a general filter (e.g. NeverSink filter) and adjust it with the help of FilterBlade.
Items that should always be picked up are: good divination cards, good currency (I personally start grabbing Alternations, Chromatics, Chances, and so on), 6-sockets, maps, good uniques.

3rd category:
This is the playstyle I personally enjoy the most and the one I usually follow when I'm playing solo. You can start from a standard "Strict filter" or "Very strict filter" and customize it a bit. I gather all the things mentioned above, I grab all uniques (and vendor them if they are worth less than 1c) and many rare items too (for chaos/regal recipes). I also pick up small "chromatic-items" (2x2 or 3x1), gems with quality (gcp recipe), flasks with 15%+ quality (glassblower recipe) and sometimes few transumations (they directly convert into scrolls). When my inventory is full, I just portal out, sell to the first vendor the instant-recipe items (6-sockets and chromatic-items) and throw everything else into a dumb quadtab, then I go back into the map.
Once my dump tab is full, I take a break from the mapping process and sort stuff out in their appropriate tabs.
Even though this is not the most efficient way of mapping, it's quite relaxing and you do not feel forced to always rush through everything. Doing chaos/regal recipe is also one of the most lucrative options you have to farm currency in a consistent way, but you have to do it in good ways, otherwise it becomes too time consuming. A good way is having at least a tab dedicated to each slot (jewels, belt, helmets, boots, gloves, armours, weapons), when they are full or do the recipes in bulk. You can also do some recipes while taking a break from mapping (when you wait for a trade, wait for friends to join the party or whatever).
Keep in mind that even though other "more efficient" ways of farming offer higher chaos-per-hour rates, they usually consider the value of everything they gather converted into chaos orbs, while with chaos/regal recipe you are actually farming pure chaos. You do not have to convert or sell anything, you just gain pure chaos, which is a massive pro.
this options is awesome to balance a poor rng, since rare items are always gonna drop in high amounts, so you always have a costant flow of currency gain.

4th category:
You can customize your filter, starting from a "Uber strict version" for example.
You only gather the items listed above, wasting almost no time in-between maps and speeding every process up.
When you are done with a map, you open a new one as soon as possible (you already have some maps in your inventory), you throw everything into a dumb tab, and then back again into the new map. Even though this is what "elite-players" usually like to do, I find it way too stressing and allow myself to play that way just in some specif istances. This process is also highly rng-reliant, if you get few good drops, you gain no money.

Let's start discussing which are the best layouts for our build. Keep in mind that in any case you should always choose maps that you like running, since that's the main reason you should play this game in the first place.
I'm gonna discuss the most interesting maps, tier by tier, starting from T1 to T10. Generally speaking you do not want to farm "real" red maps, but just Shaped maps. If this is not clear for you at this points, I'm gonna talk about it later.

I also highly suggest you to check poewizard to find out more informations about all the maps.

T1 - Beach (linear and clean layout, not many walls though, easy boss), Dungeon (messy layout, but full of walls)
T2 - Arid Lake (clean layout, not many walls though, tricky boss), Pen (nice layout, many wall, easy boss, good div cards)
T3 - Burial Chambers (nice layout, not many walls though, good div cards), Cage (nice layout, many wall, easy boss, good div cards)
T4 - Strand/Canyon/Gorge (linear layout, not many walls though, tricky bosses), Volcano (nice layout, not many walls though, good div cards), Grotto (ok layout, many walls, tricky boss, good density)
T5 - Channel (linear layout, not many walls though, good div cards), Toxic Sewer/Haunter Mansion (nice layout, many walls, good density)
T6 - Atoll (linear layout, not many walls though, tricky boss, good div cards), Underground Sea (ok layout, many walls, good density, nice div cards)
T7 - Dunes (clean layout, not many walls though), Bone crypt (ok layout, many walls, nice div cards)
T8 - Shore/Infested Valley (clean layout, not many walls though, tricky boss), Vaal Pyramid (ok layout, many walls, nice div cards)
T9 - Vault (nice layout, many walls, good density, good div cards), Waste Pool (nice layout, many walls, good density)
T10 - Bog/Siege (clean layout, not many walls though, tricky boss)

I invited you to check out those maps, but also test other options. You should not farm all these maps, you just decide few of those maps/tiers to farm, according to your Atlas planning (discussed a bit later).

First of all you need to know how map drop works in PoE. When the game rolls a map drop, first it decide the tier of the map, then it check if there are available map drops in that tier, otherwise it goes down by one tier and the process repeats until you get a valid drop.
What do I mean with valid drop? When running a map, you can only drop maps you already completed or adjacent to the map you are running. That's it.
Why is this so important? Because if you manage your atlas progression in a proper way, you are able to force the game to only drop the maps you actually want.
This is possible if you use Shaper's Orbs, upgrading a tier "X" map into a tier "X+5" one; let's make a simple example: if you use a Shaper's Orb on a Beach map (which is a T1), all the following Beach maps you are going to drop in the future are going to be T6 ones, and you cannot drop any more T1 Beach.
What's the point? Let's make another example: you shaped Atoll (T6), which enters into the pool of T11 maps as a consequence, and you do not complete any other T11 map. When you are going to run you Shaped Atoll maps (T11) and the game rolls a drop of a T11 map, you have to get a Shaped Atoll drop, since it's the only T11 completed and there are no other adjacent T11 maps (it's linked to T5 and T7 maps). You can push it further if you want, if you do not complete any T12 map, even when you would drop a T12, you won't have any available one the "loot table", so it gets downgraded into a T11 (Shaped Atoll again).
This process can be implemented in any tier of maps, ajusted according to your needs.
Another positive aspect of having a "Shaped Atlas" is that you can use white sextants to affect yellow Shaped maps, and yellow sextants to affect red Shaped maps. Sextants are another really important aspect of the mapping process, I suggest you to check them out and use them as often as possible.
A whole different aspect of the Atlas is managing the Influence of Shaper/Elder. When a map is unfluenced, it gains additional monsters (more exp and loot), moreover all the enemies have a chance to drop Elder/shaper Items, which can be quite valuable (the right bases with high enough ilvl). You really want to "lock" your influence in a good place, allowing you to have an alternating influence on the maps you want to run. This is a bit tricky to explain here, but there are good video-guides out there that explain the process. You pretty much want to spawn elder guardians or elder himself as close as possible to the maps you want to run, this should provide a permanent alternating influence (as long as you do not kill the elder or his guardians).

Even though you can party up with whoever you want and everyone can do whatever they want, if you wanna farm in an effective way, you should have a "plan". Generally speaking, the best plan is to have 1 (or maybe 2) carry, at least 1 boss-killer and at least 1 aurabot. The role of the carry is to.. well, the carry gotta carry the party. He is the guy wearing the full MF gear, he is the guy providing good AOE coverage and clearing abilities. The aurabot has to provide damage and ruvivability to the whole party, while the boss-killer need to have some strong single target ability to melt bosses.
If you are playing this build, you are the Carry.
While it would be cool if you always manage to have a party of this kind, usually you won't be able to (if you are partying up with random people).
What usually happens is that you (the carry) are going to look for an aurabot to start with and you run a couple of maps with him to see how things go; if everything is going fine, you ask the aurabot if it's ok for him if you invite more people into the party (99% he's fine with it, since he doesn't actually have to do much). Now you just fill up the party with whoever you want, for example but writing something in you guild chat (if you got one), in Global 820, Trade 820 or in your character's message (I don't know how it's actually called, the message that everyone in your friend list can see).
Make sure to decide beforehand what you want to do with the party and the payment method. Are you asking for a fee? Is it free? Tips are welcome but not mandatory? Make it clear in the message you are writing to find people.
Since you are the carry and usually you are the one creating the party and providing the maps (therefore you are also the one spending the currency in the first place, for sextants, for rolling the maps, zana mods and whatever), you need to make sure everyone is on the same page and everyone knows what you are going to do. How fast you wanna farm the maps? Do you want them to kill stuff (if they do not have a MF setup, they should not)? Do you need help with boss, or are you going to skip it? All these informations need to be delivered to the party members before getting started.

Note1: you should never ask the aurabot (or support in general) to pay you. He is providing his buffs, that's his payment.

What I personally do:
- Find 3-4 random people that wanna join the party (I have many guys in the friend list, so I usually fill the party pretty fast)
- Find an aurabot (if not already found in the previous point)
- Advise time; writing in party chat all the useful informations (fast pace, I am the one killing but I need help with bosses, follow me and don't split, all map mods are possible except no leech and reflect, clock-wise or counter clock-wise clearing of the map)
- Collecting fees, I usually ask at least 1alch/chis per map, but for high-tier maps you can and should ask more (usually you ask "X" currency per 3 maps, since you have to reroll sextants every 3 maps)
- Enter the map and wait for all the join it, before start clearing.

Ok, let's start by saying that sometimes it's funny to play with other people. I think I've always found good and funny people, the community is really nice in this game. Moreover when you find some nice players, you should add them to your friend list, this way when you are gonna run maps in the future, you can easily let them know about it.
Anyway, partying with other players makes the monsters tougher (they gain more life) but also more rewarding (each additional player adds a bonus of 10% IIQ and 40% IIR, multiplicative with your character's stats, and 50% IIQ for currency items).
Monsters are affect only by the amount of IIQ and IIR the killed has, that the reason you want to be the one killing stuff.
Those bonuses are already good by themselves, but you (as a carry) are also getting currency from the other players' fees.
By the way (in my opinion) you should make them pay something, since they are leeching exp and loot in the first place.
For example: if I'm running a Shaped Grotto with a full party (4 random characters and a support) and I ask 1 alch each per map, I'm gaining 12 alchs after 3 maps. With this currency I'm not only paying the cost of rolling the maps (let's say 3 alchs), but also partially covering the cost of the sextants I'm using (let's say I need to use an average of 4 sextants to get 2 good mods).
I would have the same costs running solo, so this is just pure profit for me.
It's not just good for you, it's also good for them. They get free exp (and if you are keeping a fast pace, they exp pretty fast) and lots of drops from the map, enxhanced by all the IIQ you are running (they can easily gain more than what they are paying you).