[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

ty!

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Donnerdrummel wrote:

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There's also http://poetools.com/experience-penalty/ which will simplify your maximum XP gain, but it's a bit out of date in terms of accurately depicting current zone levels per zone name, so just pay attention to the actual zone level # range that tells you what zone level #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

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.

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Jadran wrote:

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 ;)

I believe the OP is actually correct. I've played this build for 2 leagues now and I have found that we come by so many rares to be IDed that we are always short on wisdom scrolls. By using the portal gem it allows you to sell all portal scrolls to the vendor in exchange for wisdoms, thereby effectively doubling the amount of wisdoms you will come by.

Portal scrolls are never an issue: you only use up to 5 per map, but wisdoms you will use dozens per map.

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Nick42 wrote:

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Jadran wrote:

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 ;)

I believe the OP is actually correct. I've played this build for 2 leagues now and I have found that we come by so many rares to be IDed that we are always short on wisdom scrolls. By using the portal gem it allows you to sell all portal scrolls to the vendor in exchange for wisdoms, thereby effectively doubling the amount of wisdoms you will come by.

Portal scrolls are never an issue: you only use up to 5 per map, but wisdoms you will use dozens per map.

Oh. I had the feeling I might be wrong and now I understand Serleth is actually right. That's a smart way to put it in the OP, well played.

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ChronoExile wrote:

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Serleth wrote:

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.

2.2:

50% Deadeye
10% Drillneck
10% Pierce node > 10% Projectile damage > 30% Pierce from Piercing Shots (40% Pierce combined)

100% Pierce chance.

The right side path of Piercing Shots adds an additional 10% (5 + 5), which is where you were getting 110%.

The assumption I'm making here is that players aren't reaching level 93+, whereby they might decide to save a point by pathing to the left in the Piercing Shots wheel and invest that in something like life, or a jewel node, which would leave their current setup at 100% pierce chance in 2.2, and thus drop down to 80% pierce in 2.3.

Higher level characters who path to the right would be at 90%.

An offline planner tree should be up sometime around Wednesday or so. Maybe earlier.

As for Flameblast, the +4 to radius of Prolif should be enough to make it worthwhile. I'm relatively certain Elementalist's proliferation node doesn't stack with the gem, but I'm uncertain about that, so I'll likely futz around with a Witch open to confirm, unless somebody here already has knowledge of it?


@Hank: Thank you for your kind words. <3