Good Morning Folks! We talked a bit about this on the podcast this weekend, but Ancestor League as a whole has had some amazing staying power. More specifically I find myself still extremely engaged and we are just shy of two months into the league at this point. Throughout this league I have built six builds thus far, but only one of them… really did not live up to my expectations. Lightning Arrow Raider felt like it was going to be this amazing experience, but really… the survivability of that class did not live up to my expectations. I think in part I held onto the original configuration of the build for a bit too long and did not lean into the more crit-based build. The problem being that there was really no clear indication of when I should be doing what, but when I hit red maps things started to struggle quite a bit.
Over the course of this league, I had managed to build up quite a nest egg of currency, and I decided to burn through it in a final act of rebellion. I opted to shift my league start Lightning Arrow build into a Magic Find Crit Variant. I sifted through a bunch of options and landed upon largely following the template of Balor Mage from his solo magic find deadeye. This late in the league… everything was overinflated but I managed to cobble together the basic skeleton of this build. In truth, the respec was nowhere near as significant as I thought it would be… but still managed to burn through around 80 Regret Orbs to make it happen. Most of the cost of the build was tied up in a handful of unique jewels including a new Watchers Eye, a large ring Thread of Hope, and then I opted for a more budget option of an Impossible Escape instead of another massive ring Thread of Hope.
You can see some footage of me running through a Crimson Temple map. I am not good at “blasting maps” as it were, and still go way too slowly. However to coin something I said in the earlier Lightning Arrow video “It sure do kill”. It suffers from all of the problems that Lighting Arrow always had, where it does not have great single-target damage… and since I am no longer running an Artillery Ballista link I cannot lean upon that. However, when it comes to clearing entire screens worth of trash it does a phenomenal job and still manages to obliterate all but the tankier rares. Basically, I have been consuming my stockpile of Crimson Temple and City Square maps, and while most of the results have not been dramatic… there is a significant upward trend in the amount of currency that I am pulling from them.
The most dramatic event is that I had a Crimson Temple where I got eight raw Divine Orbs that dropped. Most of it however has been significantly more subtle where I just find single Divine Orbs a bit more commonly and have pulled several Voidborn Reliquary Keys which sell for 3.2 Divines each. I’ve yet to find an Apothecary card or any of the big chase rares, but it has been noticeable enough to know that something changed. I started running Blue Altars mostly because I needed an influx of the Eldritch currency associated with them. I might switch over to Red Altars soon just to build back up that as well, but it has been nice to occasionally hit a Sulphite Scarab Altar and help fuel my delve juice proceedings.
In two days of casually running maps on Magic Find Lightning Arrow, I have essentially repaired most of the dent that getting the gear to set up the build in the first place caused. I am not hitting things anywhere near as hard as I could be. In theory, I should be running a much more strict filter that only flags high-value items in order to maximize the speed at which I am running things. I however enjoy mulling over random small items and hunting for interesting fractures. I also like picking up “bubblegum currency”, which is not a thing that most magic finders do. So while I could improve my gear significantly as I picked up some of the cheapest magic find options available… I am not sure if I could ever really optimize my gameplay patterns in a way to generate mirrors’ worth of currency… nor would I have any real interest in spending that kind of currency in the first place.
This has allowed me to see how the other half lives. I get the appeal… but also I hate being this squishy. I’ve put on a couple of levels since switching over to this build, but I am losing way more experience than I am gaining and have mostly stalled out at level 93. I am missing one of the key defensive mechanisms built into this build that centers around getting stunned often, but recovering a ton of health when you do so. I might see if I can reconfigure my tree in such a way as to pick up these points without losing any other serious benefits. That might let me get back into positive experience territory again.
All in all, this has been interesting… but with us contemplating a private league next time, it means that none of the currency I am attempting to gain will have any value other than for crafting purposes.