[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

Agreed with everything you posted but...

Eventually Chaos:Exalted will hit 80:1 - I don't know the timing of this exactly... but it weems to me that this ratio takes 2-3 weeks to set in (I could be wrong). At any rate, enough players will want a 6-link to drive the chaos:exalt ratio up... up... up... IMO. And although I don't think that fuses will stay at 3:1, I do think they will never, ever hit 3:2 or 4:3 as in past leagues. So I expect to pay about 170 or more fuses per exalt within 2 weeks or so. But we'll see.

I was able to purchase 110 fuses per exalt at this time in past leagues. Now, I can purchase about 160 fuses per exalt in a league that's two weeks old. I expect the price of exalts to climb and the price of fuses to fall. In the end, I expect to pay 180 fuses for an exalt... maybe more. Which is way, way, way off the price of fuses in past leagues.

That said, Perandus wasn't great for Magic Find either. In that league, Cadiro made it possible for non-MF builds to obtain uniques much cheaper than in past leagues relative to pure magic find.

Coins, for non-magic find builds dropped just as frequently as for magic find build - bar the possible slight discrepancy towards IIR - and hence, the competitive advantage of MF over non-MF was diminshed.

Compare it to this league.

The competitive advantage of farming lots and lots of rares, vendoring them, and then selling the orbs for chaos/exalts takes a big hit in Prophecy - due to the decreased value of fuses.

So, while neither Perandus nor Prophecy is ideal for MF, I think that MF will take a slightly larger hit in Prophecy than it did in Perandus because - I think that, other things being equal, you tend to make more currency from selling orbs than you make from selling uniques.

But this... is speculation.

One last point - the thing that hurts magic find isn't the ratio of chaos:exalt - I don't think that this will change much in this league, but whether or not it does doesn't seem to matter.

What hurts magic find is the reduced value of fuses as reflected in the ratio of fuses:chaos. Reduced fuse value = reduced alt/jeweler/fuse value which means - other things being equal - that MF will take a bit of a hit this league. I estimate 10% but maybe that's a bit pessimistic - perhaps 3-8% is more realistic.

If we were able to somehow acquire exalts other than orbs -> chaos -> exalts then I'd agree that the lower chaos:exalt ratio (which I don't think is sustainable) would offset the higher orbs -> chaos ratio. But, other than finding uniques/high value rares/exalts, we can't farm exalts. And the frequency of finding uniques/high value rares/exalts is unchanged (well, finding high value uniques is less common but that will be offset by high unique prices).

Which is to say, the only thing that's changed is that we're now paying more orbs to get chaos... which hurts magic find. And I don't think that this will change much in the long run due to points 1 and 2 in the previous post (namely 1) exaggerated devaluation of fuses due to unwarranted expectancy of the frequency of Fated Connection Drops and; 2) higher availability of fuses, which will only increase as the league wears on, due to the fact that savvy players won't spend fuses to 5-link but will instead just purchase the 5-link prophecy which will drive the availability of fuses up (not sure how much but for sure, I think this will be very noticeable - it was very rare to get a 6-link in leagues past but very common to get a 5-link for the average player).

Time will tell.

But the inverse is always true.

As more people realize Fated Connections is a trap at its current value, the price of fuses will come down. Not as much as they have in previous leagues, undoubtedly, but the way it ALWAYS works is that fuses spike hard, then settle down, while chaos goes on a steady climb.

To that point, you're right, it likely will eventually hit 80c:1ex, but in the same breath you can expect fuses to drop from 155 to about 125-135 in that time frame.

The reason is that sure, while 5Ling is now ridiculously easy with Jeweler's Touch, that also means that smart players are going to be BANKING their fuses to use for 6L attempts, rather than blowing 200 on a 5L then calling it a day.

As a result, the demand for fuses is going to spike HARD once more people finish their builds utilizing Jeweler's Touch for the easy 5L, and then they push for the min-max.

Which, addresses the latter paragraphs of your reply as well.

More and more players every league are tasting what it's like to reach end-game, and really start to push their builds to the limit.

I call attention to the fact that T15 twinned kills in Perandus were 15c, minimum. You can now buy them for 5c.

That's a strong indicator that the amount of people capable of doing twinned T15 is on the rise. You can use this to make the following corollary:

If more people are doing Twinned T15s, more people thereby are progressing further than they have before in all aspects of the game.

Translation: more players also wanting to 6L their gear.

Like you say, all speculation, but that's my theory.

Another 1-2 weeks and we'll know for sure where we're at in terms of MF effectiveness, at least for this league.

And if we can use Perandus/Prophecy as something of an indicator of what's to come for future leagues from GGG, i.e., mechanics that have a direct impact on the league economy, this might be something to keep an eye on as a whole.