Essence League/AoW SSF Experience

To start off, I'm by no means an expert player, I played for most of Perandus league and a couple weeks during Prophecy league, but never made it to uberlab due to the little time i had to play.
Now in Essence League, I decided to play solo selffound which i have managed somewhat well up to this point, with the exception of buying a second voltaxic rift after finding one myself, more for the convenience of dumping fusings on it hoping to 6link one day without worrying about having a usable weapon.

To start things off, essences are great, making especially the leveling a lot smoother, weapon does no damage? - just use a couple essences to get a usable replacement. Especially resist problems are almost entirely gone.

Then I reached maps. I think the idea of the Atlas system is great, but in practice, especially when playing self-found it is quite flawed. I have by now cleared ~75 maps and atlas progression (as in completing new maps) becomes more and more ridiculous, especially with the red map bonus objectives.
First off, I've easily run 15-20 Promenades, Malformations and Crypts each without finding the successor map. I did find quite some T10/11 maps in those, but never the neighboring one I was really looking for. So at the end of the day I end up having to get the next map via vendor recipe, although T9s or 10s are Maps that i would actually like to run for experience. While I can see that map drops should not be limited to adjacent maps, I think that especially if the neighboring map is not cleared, yet it should have a MAJOR occurrence bonus (Example: You run a Promenade and have not completed Collonade, yet. You drop a T10 map, that map should have at least a 2/3 chance to be a Collonade). I don't really see how this system would be abusable, since you could not run the map you would be amassing when running the neighboring map yourself. So to sum it up i am in a lose/lose situation where I either lose 3 maps which would gain me reasonable experience for the time they take to run or I do not get to progress in the atlas on this side (while having cleared t15 in a different branch)

About red map objectives:
Especially for a map that you are not too sure about whether or not you can complete it, my typcial use case is:
-chisel it
-alch it
-use chaos orbs until the mods aren't ridiculous (vulnerability - area has occasional patches of nonburning ground is not doable with vaal pact)
-vaal it to get either
a) vulnerability - area has occasional patches of nonburning ground
or
b) corrupted map of a different type which i have already cleared the bonus objective on

To not only nag but also say something positive: red maps in general seem to be quite a bit more obtainable than previously, this is a good thing since I personally felt like the big obstacle was obtaining these maps to begin with, rather than trying to run them.

Some of the maps have ridiculously little space to fight their bosses, especially Pier comes to mind, but also Mesa. What's the point of a ranged build when you have to stand at point blank range anyway?
Also I find the Jungle Valley boss with the small space and tons of flickerstriking spiders a bit hefty for a t1 map. Compared to Arachnid tomb (beautiful tileset!) you (at least subjectively) have little to no space to work with.


Uberlab:
-First off, the trial system with trials in maps is complete bogus, i easily cleared 200+ maps before i found my final trial. Sure, when you have global 820 at your aid that will be quicker but that does not make the current system a good one. While I find it okay as a mean of obtaining lab entries, having to find all 6 of them, when there is apparently no entropy system favoring ones that aren't completed at least slightly.
-For the lab itself: Izaro is a massive ****. He's fast enough so I cannot run away with my 25% movespeed boots and ignores both blink arrow and mirror arrow clones entirely. Also he casually onehits me with his autoattack at ~4.3k life + 200ish ES.
Then, he takes little to no damage when i get a couple blast rain attacks off between mirror arrowing and running. While this works reasonably well for the first two enounters (except i have to skip idol days because I will never be able to keep them all down while constantly having to run away from izaro), on the third encounter the whole fkin room is one single trap and I cannot possibly keep izaro on screen to deal damage to him because i'll be either standing in a trap or on his feet, both spelling death. His inconsistent behaviour of when he does or does not spawn trash don't make this better. I have had two runs in which i simply ran out of flasks because he refused to spawn any ads and I could not avoid all trap damage forever. Again, Vaal Pact does not help here.
When it comes to trashmobs in the labyrinth, as long as they're not quillbeasts i'm quite happy to see them, after all they're flask charges, that I can gain without really having to worry about my well-being.

In the meantime I have no trouble doing a deathless Atziri run with the exact same setup.
I don't exactly roflstomp it, but I can play around the encounters' mechanics to emerge victorious. I have moments where i can stand still and lay damage on the bosses and only few (and telegraphed!) attacks actually onehit kill me. I'm fine with Izaro onehitting me with his jump attack or another one of this big attacks, but being onehit by his basic attack is just a bad joke. Again, I have ~4.3k life, not 1k.

In comparison though I have to say that the ease and speed of clearing the Atziri trash between bosses gives you a relatively good idea, how much damage you're going to deal to the bosses, while in Lab the trash dies instantly regardless and the boss is a whole different story. I personally found the Infernal king a LOT easier than Izaro.

Another thing bugging me is the super low frequency of Her Mask divination cards. They used to drop a LOT more, at least for me.

One final thing that really bothers me is the whole loading while playing thing. Sure, it's great the game does not take 5 minutes to load up anymore, but I pay quite the price for it if I try to actually start playing when I arrived in my hideout. I've lost my Zana Daily twice due to having a "one portal only"- quest, entering and landing on login screen from he loading screen or from the map when trying to move. Similarly I lost a couple Offerings due to Lab loading tons and tons of stuff. A proposed fix here would be some kind of display of loading status in the Aspirant's plaza so you can see when it's safe to enter.
I am among the people who don't have an SSD (or in my case the space on the SSD to put the game on it), and losing map entries or just straight up dying due to stuff not being properly loaded yet just sucks and feels awful.

for enable "full level asset loading before your enter" start the game with --noasync

your life is a bit low, facing uber itzaro with an evasion based char you should have 5k life min, also 30% more move speed is the most important stat on your boots before 80+ life.

uber itzaro with an evasion based ranger is quite difficult, get a basalt flask to mitigate slams you can't avoid in time. also the recommendation is got was using frost wall to block him off. and use life lech support on a secondary skill.

i gave up uber lab last league after some tries because my gear and skills sucked and i was fed up playing "chicken run" with bosses.

playing ranger was fun but, sadly, atlas of worlds moved even more end game boss fights into small rooms with no real space to kite and very few areas with no perma damage.

Try using a decoy totem for boss fights that are killing you (including Izaro). They will basically completely ignore you. Right before your totem dies, re-cast. Decoy totem is somehow the most OP but also underappreciated skill in the game.


As for the Atlas progression... the game cannot be balanced around SSF play, since the majority of players are not SSF (many may play solo or SF, but not intentionally restricting themselves as such). In general the game is balanced around trade being a part of the game experience, and this includes map drops.

Yeah, decoy totem comes to mind, but any other boss in the game will from my experience at least occasionally go after my blink/mirror arrow clones, which is why i went with those up till now. Will grab a decoy totem and test how that feels.

Thanks a lot for the parameter, that will hopefully help a lot and make the game feel a lot smoother!

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ZK_milkY wrote:

While I can see that map drops should not be limited to adjacent maps, I think that especially if the neighboring map is not cleared, yet it should have a MAJOR occurrence bonus (Example: You run a Promenade and have not completed Collonade, yet. You drop a T10 map, that map should have at least a 2/3 chance to be a Collonade). I don't really see how this system would be abusable, since you could not run the map you would be amassing when running the neighboring map yourself.

There are people (like me) who deliberately do not unlock all maps due those maps having bad or inferior layouts.
Furthermore this would very obviously and easily be (ab)usable. Just dont kill the boss in the "mega drop chance" map. Some bosses are not "efficient" anyway. And there may be tendency for such bosses to be in an otherwise good layout.
Or stack up the maps until you get a lot of it before running it.

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ZK_milkY wrote:

About red map objectives:

You can do it 2-step: First unlock (no Vaal) which makes it droppable anywhere and then later get the bonus per Vaaling.

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ZK_milkY wrote:

Uberlab:
<snip>
Again, I have ~4.3k life, not 1k.

Ranged build with lowish life is a particulary difficult choice vs Izaro. Especially if you do not have above-average playing skills at fighting him with such a build. Contrary to what you write the safest area is close to Izaro. People fight him with such builds by staying close to him and circling around him. (Obviously you will have to distance yourself temporarily vs green circle and leap/smash attack.)

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vio wrote:

also the recommendation is got was using frost wall to block him off. and use life lech support on a secondary skill.

Is this recommendation based on practical experience? I have tested Frost Wall (in Talisman?) vs some bosses (Voll & bleeding dog from that boss duo) with charge attack. They could charge straight through the Frost Wall. That made me discard the notion of using Frost Wall as defensive tool vs such bosses.

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Docbp87 wrote:

Try using a decoy totem for boss fights that are killing you (including Izaro). They will basically completely ignore you. Right before your totem dies, re-cast. Decoy totem is somehow the most OP but also underappreciated skill in the game.

Have "heard" that Izaro Goddess barrage ignores taunting from Decoy Totem though. Not that that makes it useless or weak. It is supposedly still very strong vs Izaro.

Correct. The Goddess, both in Labyrinth, and as a map boss (Orchard and Plaza) cannot be taunted (or cursed for that matter). Her attacks in the lab are pretty easy to avoid though.

Somehow I missed the fact that OP only has 4K hp. That's not enough life. Not by a long shot.

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Zrevnur wrote:

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vio wrote:

also the recommendation is got was using frost wall to block him off. and use life lech support on a secondary skill.

Is this recommendation based on practical experience?

nope, i used lightning strike last league and abusing frost wall as a means to do more damage was against my gaming philosophy.

i know it's weird. but it keeps me playing.

So I haven't run any more uberlab, yet after getting my 2 points, but I did a merciless lab for the prophecy chain. decoy totem really trivialized the izaro fights, which required me to play the game beforehand.
It's true that the godess ignores my totem, i'm not getting onehit by single projectiles, and it can be dodged rather reliably which makes it quite fine for me.


the --noasync parameter helps considerably, but is unfortunately still rather inconsistent which leads to me having to wait in maps I haven't run for a minute or so to progress reliably safely. Especially "increased monster variety" leads to frozen screens, resulting in me dying to trash. Another instance are the loved quillbeasts, killing a group of which creates enough projectiles to offscreen myself because I cannot possibly dodge with the .5 second screen freeze, which is rather frustrating. Not even to mention the combination of the two above where I move a bit and lightning arrow in a random direction to see whether the game is stuttering and after screen freeze can go back to my hideout.

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ZK_milkY wrote:

Another instance are the loved quillbeasts, killing a group of which creates enough projectiles to offscreen myself because I cannot possibly dodge with the .5 second screen freeze, which is rather frustrating.

Dodging random monster projectiles does in my experience (with lockstep!) not work anyway.
When I still tried that I tended to get hit even if (on my screen) I clearly dodged it. Not specifically about spikers though. Hiding behind something does however work. And dodging aimed missiles does work too - correct visuals are not necessary for that.

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Zrevnur wrote:

"

ZK_milkY wrote:

Another instance are the loved quillbeasts, killing a group of which creates enough projectiles to offscreen myself because I cannot possibly dodge with the .5 second screen freeze, which is rather frustrating.

Dodging random monster projectiles does in my experience (with lockstep!) not work anyway.
When I still tried that I tended to get hit even if (on my screen) I clearly dodged it. Not specifically about spikers though. Hiding behind something does however work. And dodging aimed missiles does work too - correct visuals are not necessary for that.

From my experience, you can quite reliably the on-death spikes from quillbests by sidestepping after shooting. If I know i'm up against them I tend to put blink arrow clone and decoy totem in front of me before firing, if I'm on an open map, on terrace-like maps you can of course take cover behind walls.