Since I spent some time yesterday talking about my Righteous Fire Chieftain, I figured I would talk this morning about some improvements I have been making to my high survival magic find mapping character, my Lightning Arrow Champion. I had first played a version of Lightning Arrow at the end of Crucible as a test for a league start and then started a Raider variant for Ancestor league. I just did not like how little survival the character had and wound up retooling it late in the league into a Champion variant. When it came to rolling a second character in our private league I went with the Champion variant again because I knew I could make it work on almost no gear and that it would have quite a bit of survival. Since it only really needed two unique items it would be extremely flexible when it came to whatever gear I happened to find. As soon as we found our first Perseverance and a pair of Shadows and Dust I knew I was good to go and just needed to half-ass my way into a tri-element bow.
The biggest change that I needed to make was getting a better bow and more specifically a bow that fired an additional arrow. Similarly, I wanted to get a quiver that also fired an additional arrow… which would then in turn allow me to drop Greater Multiple Projectiles from the support gems and get a significant damage boost as a result of that alone. I found a reasonable 1200 dps bow from trade that had pretty much everything I wanted on it and given the prevalence of folks doing magic find lightning arrow the price was only 10 Divines. The quiver was significantly cheaper but I specifically needed a couple of resistance hits on it to maintain elemental caps. Essentially dropping GMP I still fire 6 arrows and said arrows pierce 4 targets… making the entire process feel pretty great.
The other major thing that I needed was to swap Artillery Ballista into my chest piece and get an actual six link for that. By the time we were swimming in six-links, my appetite for fiddling with gear on this particular character was at a minimum. Basically, I had been running Artillery Ballista as a four-link in my gloves and had a whole series of nonsense Mana Forged Arrows abilities firing off in a five-link chest. In the final form, I moved the rest of my utility abilities to the gloves and used that opportunity to pick up a good corrupt with some additional attack speed, and then added Culling Strike to my Artillery Ballista link since I was losing access to it via Mana Forged Arrows which now only fires Frenzy.
As far as Magic Find goes…. I am really not going too far off the path to make that happen. During my copious amount of farming, I lucked into two relatively well-rolled Ventor’s Gamble rings. Apart from that I just happened to roll a helmet with +19% rarity on it giving me a total of +15% Quantity and +70% Rarity. It is not a ton and nowhere near as much as the folks who are sacrificing damage and defense to stack every last drop of it… but enough to feel like you are sticking your thumb on the scale from time to time. Since my Lightning Arrow Champion is a mapper and does nothing else, it seemed easy enough to integrate this much into the build. The biggest change I would make to the character would be to drop perseverance and pick up a Headhunter… but I doubt that will happen unless I get a windfall.
As far as the character goes, here is what the stats look like. You can also check out my POB over on POE.Ninja. I am pretty happy with the current state of this character. Last league, I attempted to make the Tornado Shot shift and I just did not like it anywhere near as much. I might try that again given it is mostly just swapping some gem links around, but I am not sure I will like it any better than I did previously. For now, this is the character that I use to burn through maps and get sulfite so that I can feed the delving on my Righteous Fire Chieftain. While I can do juiced T16s… the bosses end up taking longer than I would prefer so I am probably going to keep sticking to the t11 Cemetary and t12 Tropical Island sequence that I have been doing up to this point.
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Morning Folks! Yesterday I wrapped up my third character of “Bel League” and this is ultimately the one I originally planned as my “first alt”. Essentially, I wanted a low-pressure map blaster that I knew I could make work on minimal or easily obtained gear. Essentially the idea is to go Champion for survival and Lightning Arrow for ease of getting off the ground. I am more or less following the template of Belgladius, with some items that I used in the original Raider version of the build that was my Ancestor league starter. Primarily the build uses Shadows and Dust for rampage and unholy might as well as some additional Mana Leech, and Perseverance to turn my permanent fortify stacks into permanent Onslaught as well as a bit of Attack Damage since I am stacking both Armor and Evasion. In this specific build I am throwing in a Poised Prism because it is just a generically good quiver with some resists on it and The Taming which similarly fixes some resists and offers up a bit of elemental damage.
The biggest challenge that I find myself in currently is getting enough levels to finish out my tree and I am one level away from 78 which will allow me to actually equip the belt. I also need to sort out my Pantheon and at a minimum get the freeze immunity. One of the huge benefits of a character like this is that it slides into maps extremely easily. I’ve been grinding tier 5 maps to get some levels and am about to transition up into yellow maps. By the time I am in my 90s I should be ripping through Red maps without much issue and hopefully running red/blue altars for drops. Between now and then I really need to find myself a new bow because while I found a lucky six link along the way 566 dps will not cut it for long. Realistically I need something more in the range of 800-900 to really rip through the t16 maps.
I also probably need to find some better gear, because right now after raiding my vault… I am in an “aggressively fine” state. When I ding 78 I will be able to equip Perseverance, and then with a little harvest crafting, I should be able to balance out my resistances. This will still leave me far in the red as far as Chaos goes, but pending I am careful with map modifiers that should not really impact me heavily even in red maps. I would really like to see my armor and resistances a little bit higher, somewhere in the range of 20k so I will need to be on the lookout for good replacements to slot in. If I find two amazing rings, I might be able to keep the resists while also pouring on some chaos. My amulet is also pretty crappy but I am mostly using it to get some attributes I need to equip other items. If you are curious here is a POB I dumped this morning with the current state of my gear.
None of this really matters though because this is what it looks like to play this build… admittedly with a MTX that makes the Lightning Arrow a bit more vibrant. The biggest challenge is how much I need that Mana Leech because there will be times when I run out of mana while mapping and have to wait for the Leech to catch up. In theory, I should have -7 mana on my Amulet and Rings to make this build feel a bit more stable. It works well enough while you are rolling but definitely suffers from the “never stop killing” problem because when there are lulls in the density I start to bottom out my reserves. While I enjoy Boneshatter quite a bit and it feels good to map on it… this is really the gameplay I want when I just want to delete a bunch of surplus maps for goodies. I need to finish out the fourth lab at some point today, but I don’t figure I will have any issues with it.
So with Lightning Arrow coming online, I am very likely to fall into the old familiar pattern of zipping through maps quickly to gain sulphite and then spending that sulphite while delving on the Boneshatter Juggernaut. For the past several leagues I have preferred to have some sort of fast mapper character and then a delve character and alternate back and forth between the two. I am hoping to get my Lightning Arrow character at least to around 95. I am doubting that I will make the pivot into magic find like I did last league, but If I just happen into a couple of extremely well-rolled Ventor rings and a very well-rolled Goldwyrm I might alter those plans. I mostly hope to be able to juice the maps through the league mechanic and see what all I can get doing that and maybe blending in some delirium.
Anyways! I am off to get ready and go do some shopping. I hope you are all having a great week as we slide forward towards Christmas. I am technically “off” now but I had to pop in and deal with some work this morning. I am looking forward to the long break and finishing my fiftieth book of the year and hopefully having a bit of a much needed mental reset.
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I think I have reached the point with my Boneshatter Juggernaut where I have gotten it about as far as I can without access to the trade economy. My crafting knowledge is good enough to make a character function in a pseudo-ssf environment but not good enough to start fine-tuning my gear. At this point, I really miss being in the trade league because it would probably be straightforward to fix the awkward bits of this build and make it excel like I think it should. After spending two divines and all of my rare crafting materials yesterday trying to make a better chest piece off a defensively enchanted drop from a heist that Kodra got… I think I am done trying to craft anything complicated because I just can’t cope when those crafts ultimately fail. Mostly it just feels like I am throwing away resources that would be better spent just buying the thing I ultimately want.
Conceptually I like the idea of a private league, but I think maybe the default length of one is set to 10 days for a good reason. Now is about the time when I would prefer for the characters to just merge into the normal trade league, and we still have another 30 days left in our private league. It was a really fun way to start the league, and for the most part, I think all of us have been able to get characters “functional” but maybe not “great” as of yet. What I am seeking for gear would just be much easier to get on trade league… for example last night I spent 2 Divines, 1 Exalt, 1 Annul, and 1 Orb of Conflict attempting to craft something that I could buy for 40 Chaos. The same has been true with the copious amounts of crafting materials I have poured into trying to get a halfway decent axe… that still pales in comparison to the most basic thing I could pick up on trade for a single divine. I’ve just reached the point where I would personally be better served in the trade league.
I’ve made it fairly far on my own and am sitting at 105 of 115 maps, with the remaining ones that I need all unique. This is I think another thorn that is jabbing me right now, is because this is the point where I would just buy the maps that I am missing instead of fishing for them through Kirac. Sure Putrid Cloister is always going to be an expensive map, but it is driving me insane that I have not finished my 115 yet. I feel so far behind the curve as compared to where I would normally be at this point. Part of it is that I lost my comfy Righteous Fire playstyle, and another part of it realizing how much of the currency I was acquiring came from trades and not from raw drops. I also did not realize how much focus and purpose I derived from knowing that I was building towards being able to buy whatever thing I needed for my build. Grinding for the purpose of grinding feels hollow without those “stretch goals” that I was working towards.
So instead… I’ve begun creating alts. One of the abilities that amuses me greatly is Volcanic Fissure of Snaking. Essentially it erupts three times and has some basic seeking logic that will cause the fissures to seek out targets nearby when possible. Over the weekend I started a new Marauder with the intent of going toward Chieftain for the easy resistances and Hinekora explosions. I am sort of going towards something like this, which was a character I found on POE.Ninja seemed to be doing what I was trying to do. Essentially the idea will be to focus on Mace/Sceptre and then do whatever I can to scale up the fire damage from the fissures. I was able to switch over to the transfigured gem before the end of Act 1, and now that I am in Act 2 have have access to Shockwave it really is starting to feel great.
The other alt that I have been playing with is good ole tried and true Lightning Arrow Champion. Now I played this towards the end of the last league and had a lot of fun with it. It can get by without much in the way of gear save for a handful of uniques… that I have thankfully already acquired. I’m at the tail end of Act 4 and would probably be further if I did not get distracted yesterday with starting the Lava Snake character. It is a comfy playstyle and a fun way to churn through maps, though honestly… I gotta say I am more enamored with the chieftain currently. I like the idea of trying out something that I have not played before, especially since I can only really get characters so far without better knowledge of the crafting system. I think maybe the SSF gameplay style is just not for me. While I have enjoyed dumping stuff in the bank and seeing other people use it, I feel like I am stuck in a bit of a rut currently without the ability to get upgrades.
All in all, I am still having quite a bit of fun, and I don’t mean this morning’s post to sound like I am super frustrated. I am still finding joy in what I am doing, but I’ve come to know myself a bit more I guess. I know that I miss the trade economy more than I thought I would. It really has been the factor that has kept me engaged with Path of Exile for as long as I have each league. Losing access to it and losing access to my preferred character and playstyle… has been more of an emotional hit than had hoped. Alting is a comfy space for me, so I think I am going to focus on it for a bit. I am really curious to see what this Volcanic Fissure of Snaking character feels like once I get higher levels and gear. I think it might even be a fun character down in Delve if I can get the survival high enough.
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Morning Folks! One of the weirdest laments of this league has been the forever sliding state of my Lightning Arrow build. Last weekend I shifted it into a magic find setup, which was enjoyable… but I still struggle with the fact that the character is squishy as heck. My general tolerance for random deaths is extremely low, and as a result, I end up trying to build most of my characters with a boatload of defensive layers. As for my Lightning Arrow character… the only real defensive layer is being able to kill things extremely quickly. While getting bucketloads of loot has been enjoyable… I still do not really love the constant chain of deaths that set back any progress I have made level-wise.
A good deal of our focus of late has shifted to planning for the private league idea that I threw out on the podcast a few weeks back. This immediately got labeled as “Bel League” by the AggroChat crew… which is a little self-referential and egotistical for my tastes… but I get blamed for most dumb ideas. While we don’t exactly know when 3.23 is going to land, we do know that it should be sometime in either late November or early December. This has shifted my focus to thinking about builds that I could cobble together with little to no gear. Really the perfect answer to this is SRS Guardian, but I have no confidence that it is not going to eat some pretty significant nerfs prior to the next league. Lightning Arrow was also a build that I was able to get up and running on four links and start progressing into mapping. It was not however a build that I could run delve on… and given that I love delve… I am not sure if it would be a good fit for another league start.
So I am doing the extremely dumb thing of running up a new character as a test of what Lightning Arrow would feel like on a Champion. Champion has so many different defensive layers and can be built in a way to feel exceptionally tanky. I am wondering if I can somehow manage to split the difference and make a character that has the effective killing power of Lighting Arrow Deadeye, without feeling like I am going to die if a monster looks in my direction. Permanent Fortify is pretty huge, and the fact that I can throw on a specific belt to give me permanent Onslaught because I have Fortify should also help. Also being able to scale my attack damage slightly off whichever is lower between Evasion and Armor, allows me to focus on those defenses and still get some sort of damage from them.
The only negative about starting Duelist, is that it has to travel quite a long way to get to the bow nodes that I need. This has ended up with an extended ugly duckling period where the build just felt awkward for quite a while as I pathed through a bunch of nodes that did not really bestow much in the way of power. I am also sorta “half-assing” this build by looking at my Lightning Arrow build, and a few of the folks who are playing it on Champion and trying to split the difference between the two. Unless this build just knocks my socks off… it is highly unlikely that I play this as a league starter. However if I can make it work with minimal gear… it might be fun to throw together as a mapper for some magic find to help get good stuff for the rest of the AggroChat crew.
I think more than anything, that is going to be the most enjoyable aspect of a “GuildSF” gameplay experience. I like dumping things in the bank and finding items that my friends need. That is the biggest part that keeps me from ever going true SSF, is that I want to be able to pool resources among my friends. SSF or Solo Self Found means what it says… you cannot interact or group with other players in any way. Having a private trade league however gives us all of the benefits of trade, but limiting it to a much smaller pool of players. Granted it is going to cost us about $60 to keep the league going for the entire time, but that seems reasonable especially when diluted amongst the handful of us that are going to be playing.
More than likely I will go with the tried and true Righteous Fire, mostly because it allows me to get into Delve pretty early. Delve generates a ton of useful things, and for crafting gear it will benefit the entire group as a whole if we can farm up a ton of Fossils and Resonators early. Additionally, it will give me a stockpile of Goddess Offerings and Divine Vessels which can be really hard to find through mapping. I also know the gear needs of Righteous Fire really well at this point and can make it work on limited gear well enough to get down at least to the 100 depth in Delve. I also know that I can complete at least two void stones and finish all of the maps with the build.
Maybe Lighting Arrow Champion will surprise me… but for the moment I mostly just want to test this theory out and see how stable I can make it feel before losing access to the trade market.
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