Chisel, Alch, Vaal + Sextant = No map sustain?

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Prizy wrote:

It seems like the recent changes to map drops really negatively affects players that use a shaped strategy.

What is your atlas bonus (for those struggling)?

I'm in SSF and basically completing full atlas (I think I'm at 149 right now) and I have plenty of red maps.

Some people are complaining about T16 Elder map sustain, which I never understand as GGG never intended players to be able to sustain T16 maps. Whether they should or not is probably a different discussion.

If you complete the full atlas the sustain is much better imo and a lot less stressful.

Rather than shapning the atlas, if you are in a trade league I would compete as many maps as you can... sell the ones you don't want and buy shaped maps you do want. It's more trading, but is less stressful in the long run. Especially with that new Poe live maps application.

A lot of people complaining about sustain are using a shaped strategy and using "red maps" as a synonym for T16 shaped maps. This behavior may be intended by GGG to encourage people to complete the atlas... who knows.

Yes, you are fully right there, sustaining T16 doesn't need to be done... usually.

Though, given the mechanics of this league-content you need high lvl bases for synthezizing, otherwise you'll only get low item levels with a nice implicit, unable to roll the good mods needed to craft the extraordinary gear we've been teased with and all want a change to obtain in one way or another.

My personal experience: I can sustain T16 maps, it's costly though. My atlas is completed (besides 2-3 unique maps and the 4 guardian maps to force T16 drops always being elder).
T16 are supposed to be hard to run, to give a bit of a reward compared to T15 for the better drops and have the chance to reward you with ilvl 86 drops besides shaper/delve.

Now the issue creeps up: If you want to play the new league content - the only reason to play league besides the achievements - you want to get access to the chance of being rewarded with high ilvl bases as well. Those bases can right now only drop in 2 ways:

A: You run an ilvl 83 fragment in the nexus which has the modifier to drop 3 levels higher, you'll only drop fractured items while it decays.

B: You need to get an ilvl 83 boss, which can only spawn if you're setting down an ilvl 83 memory fragment while there is a free space for a reward node.

So, since we can only keep 10 fragments at all the only ways to receive such a boss are the following:

-You need to plan ahead and have no pieces left to be set before running the reward nodes at the current run.
-You only run a single reward node at a time, which is a fair waste of time already
-You permanently need to keep ilvl 83 fragments in your list, which is the easiest way.

So, this leagues end-game content is gates heavily behind paying for the ability to run maps, namely vaaling, sextanting, prophecy boosting and scarab boosting them at the same time to guarantee a decent amount of map return.

Starting friday this will be a bit easier since fractured items also drop without the tile decaying, still, the hurdle to even get a single ilvl 86 fractured item is massive, not to speak of getting an ilvl 86 fractured item which has a good base... not to speak of getting one with a good base and decent fractured mods.

It's like incursion corruption altar on steroids, there are so many layers behind it to even get the chance of creating such a base that it's easier to simply farm up towards a mirror and ignore the mechanic completely. The only worthwhile things to look out for are therefore ilvl 83 abyss jewels and normal jewels of nearly any kind of ilvl, those always give a bonus compared to the existing ones.

So to end it:

If GGG doesn't want people to sustain high-end maps then they need to make their mechanics for leagues work in respect to that.
If it's an oversight they need to fix it simply.
If both is intended that's just disgusting, most people never kill uber-elder, many not even the elder, now those are forced to re-play the same low-lvl content over and over which causes them to get bored and frustrated - reasonably so - and leave the game for more fun venues.


So, something has to be reworked, the question just is in what way exactly.

I don't know what you are doing. My atlas is at 158 and i chisel, alch and vaal quite every map. The only expection is if the map is after alching already ~ 95 % Abolutely no problem with sustaining red maps.