Vaal Lightning Arrow

Sometimes a Failure Isn’t a Failure

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Friends… I’ve been struggling with something for the last couple of weeks. For the Trial of the Ancestors league, I decided last minute to make a shift in my normal routine and start the league as a Lightning Arrow Raider. I spent time right before the league launch leveling one as a test, and then ultimately decided I could live with the consequences of playing a much faster… but much squishier build. The truth is… I could not. I almost immediately missed being able to spend my time farming my favorite league mechanic… delve. Before the end of that first week of the new league, I had already started leveling another Righteous Fire Juggernaut and was happy as a clam farming delve. For the most part… I had considered the Lightning Arrow Raider a bit of a failure and that I should have stuck with the tried and true Juggernaut.

On some level, this made a lot of sense. I love the Righteous Fire Juggernaut so much that I have now played it for three leagues, and even went so far as to get my friend Ammo to draw my particular chosen appearance for the blog banner. What makes this even more complicated is how intrinsically attached this character is to my favorite game mode… because I love spending my time bopping from node to node down in Delve. It is super hard for any other build to compete with this… pending it is not also a super tanky build that can survive down there. The thing is… I knew going into the Lightning Arrow Raider that it was going to be a deeply mapping-focused build and as a result, I knew that it would have limitations. While I considered it a failure… it did manage to gather up enough currency to be able to outfit itself in gear, and fund all of the starter gear I needed for the Juggernaut and then still some to spare… as well as unlocking over half of the Atlas of Worlds. That really does not sound like a failed state to me if I view it through a bit more neutral lens.

To some extent… it also isn’t really the problem of the build because I knew there were some glaring holes in my itemization and I was not really willing to invest the time, effort, and more importantly currency to fix them. I can deal without Chaos Damage being capped given that I am mostly zooming around maps. What I could deal with significantly less so… is the fact that I was doing nothing to fix my ailment problems and at the same time invested NONE of my Divine Vessels into actually unlocking a proper pantheon. I treated the character like it was disposable… which as a result produced a feeling that I was playing something impermanent in the way I approached it. For as little effort as I really put forward to fixing its problems, it probably performed even better than it should have.

So last night and this morning I swapped around a bunch of gear, in an effort to try and solve some of those problems. Essentially up til this point, I had been using Wurm’s Molt to solve some of my attribute problems since this build is STARVING for Strength and Intelligence. Essentially most of the gear swaps were an attempt to stop using this damned belt and move over to something more fitting like a well-rolled Prismweave. One of the first steps was a necklace swap because I needed some raw attributes as well as some minus mana cost along with a less-than-ideal anoint that I am using to fix intelligence problems. This led me to look at quivers and I stumbled onto the extremely interesting Shattered Divinity which gives me a pet Harbinger that casts useful buffs on me every 4 seconds. I made the swap from Shadows and Dust which gave me Rampage and Unholy Might over to Tanu Ahi which I had in my vault which gives me Adrenaline and Onslaught.

Lastly, I finally spent a large chunk of currency and picked up Ancestral Vision which makes me officially elemental ailment immune. All of this combined with finally taking the time to get a Cast when Damage Taken/Immortal Call set up in my gloves has led me to a point of dealing noticeably more damage and adding a few more layers of survivability. I am officially off the radar at this point and veering further away from what most of the other Lightning Arrow builds look like, but I am also adapting it to feel more like something I want to play. I have to say all of these changes have breathed new life into the build and made it enjoyable to run around once again. Hopefully, I can stay alive long enough to pour on a few more levels and pick up an additional frenzy charge.

Sometimes a failed build… is really just a build that I gave up on. I think I was simply homesick to be back down in Delve, and cut this off a little too soon. We will see how things go from here because I am just about out of liquid currency and need to spend some more time making it before I dive further into my Storm Brand Inquisitor.

First Day of Mapping

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Good Morning Folks! We are on day four of the Trial of the Ancestors League. According to the /played command, I have put in 32 hours so far and that got me through the campaign and up to comfortably doing yellow maps. I dawdled a bit during the campaign but enjoyed the ride. I am on such a different trajectory than I am used to because I am playing what is commonly referred to as a “map blaster” character. This means that I am designed to decimate oncoming packs of mobs before they can touch me… but the trade-off is that I have very little in the way of proper defenses. This sort of flies in the face of everything that I know about building a comfortable character, but somehow it is working. I ran with a friend who needed credit for a map I was just about to run yesterday, and he was laughing at how much nonsense is flying around the screen when I get moving.

My big lucky drop of the weekend was picking up a corrupted six-link bow, that was in the right colors… or at least “right enough” colors. This is going to hold me until I get much deeper into my character and pick up something in the range of a 1000 dps bow. This bow would be awful for the more popular Toxic Rain/Explosive Arrow builds, but it works beautifully for my build as realistically I want flat damage against three elements, and this has two. The bleeding bits on the bow are a bit meh as is the accuracy because I am capped without needing it on my bow. I would have rather had some attack speed but in the realm of corrupted gear this is pretty solid. I need to get some beyond mobs and hopefully get some tainted currency to get some quality on it.

I know I had said that I was going to try and craft my own gear… but at this point, I am fully engaged in the trade economy and have made a few smaller sales. On Sunday night I started poking around looking at prices for six link chest pieces and managed to snatch this one up for 25 Chaos Orbs. This spent the largest chunk of my currency that I have gathered up so far but seemed like a good call. It has really good evasion and decent armor and while there are various elements of this that I would change, again it isn’t bad for a corrupted item. I wish it had more resistance on it, but that is sort of my general problem right now… the fact that I am pretty much capped in only one element.

Another really lucky drop was that I picked up a Poised Prism with some decent resistances on it. This is in theory the suggested quiver for this build and I had hoped that I would see one drop. Truth be told… apart from eventually replacing this with a perfect roll I think this is pretty damned good. I’ve seen all of the common quivers at this point, so it seems like they just drop more often than other uniques. I am hoping to see a Prismweave to replace the Wurm’s Molt that I am currently wearing. Unfortunately at the moment, I can’t really afford to get rid of the Molt, because it is helping to fix some of my attribute problems. I am pretty much starving for Strength and Intelligence, and having to use up a handful of significant suffixes to gain more.

The other purchase that I made was a pair of Shadows and Dust gloves. Namely, this is a way of getting rampage on the build, and it seems to really help my clear. I picked these up I believe for 2 Chaos and then threw some jewelers orbs to add some sockets. I need to recolor these in order to set up a cast when damage taken combo with Immortal Call, just to add another smaller layer of defense. I’ve got my auto snipers hit set up in my boots at the moment and all of my auras are in my helm. I am still running clarity because I still have mana problems. My ballista is at least now running off Lifetap which is fine given I have a decent chunk of life leech. Truth be told when I am killing things, I have no real mana problems… it is only when I am setting up for the next run.

I’ve never played a character before that was this much of a glass cannon and was always riding the edge of falling apart completely. At the moment I have 100% spell suppression which is good, and decent enough evasion though I would like to see that MUCH higher. My armor however is complete shit and my resists… are awful. I’ve contemplated trying to create a Taming ring, but so far I have not seen any of the component Berek rings drop. I could farm Heterochromia cards, but one of the problems I am running into as a mapper… is that without buying maps from the market, you can’t really reliably “Farm” anything over and over. I feel like all of the mapping strategies involve either buying specific maps or buying scarabs in order to set up ideal conditions. I would for example love to be trying to farm Legion, but that requires Legion Scarabs. Delve honestly was just more simple… and quite honestly more rewarding. I ran literally any map until I got Sulphite and then Delved until I ran out, and then repeated the virtuous cycle.

I can’t complain though, I am only one day into mapping and I already have 32 maps completed and have done one of the Maven Challenges. I need to find a zone connection diagram that I can reference because I need to be running connected maps in an attempt to get the maps I am missing. I am not super in a rush to get to red maps, because on my test version of this build… that is where things started to fall apart without being resist capped. What I really want to find is an Ancestral Vision, because it would solve my elemental ailments problem completely. I currently have 50% elemental avoidance and Ancestral Vision would get me the rest of the way to 100%.

As far as my Atlas tree goes… I am sorta all over the place at the moment. I rushed to get Shaping the Skies and Mountains to start getting some free map device unlocks. I’ve picked up a little here and a little there on the essences and picked up Stream of Consciousness since I won’t have a steady supply of scarabs for a while. I am slowly working my way up to the Einhar nodes that unlock access to the beasts that sell for quite a bit of currency. I figure at least until I have unlocked everything I will be doing essence/beasts to hopefully make a little currency. Essences mostly because I want to maybe be able to craft some gear at some point. Beasts mostly to hopefully sell some split beasts and mirror beasts.

I’ve done only the smallest amount of Delve, basically running down my Sulphite supply each time I fill it up. I know that this build is very much not designed for the rigors of the deep, but for the most part, so far it has been “fine”. I mostly just have to keep blowing things up in front of me for fear of anything actually touching me. Mostly I am working on the tedium of setting things up and getting some initial darkness resistance and light radius unlocked. I know at some point I will level another character that is more specifically designed for delving and then be running that in the deep. I will say though… the little bit of Delve that I have done… has felt generally more rewarding than most of the mapping I have done. Heist is still the mixed back it always is, but for the most part, the build has done excellently there.

All told though I am pretty happy with the build and pretty happy with where I am after 32 hours of play. I will continue to chip away at the Atlas, and I am hoping by the time I have unlocked all 115 maps, I will have enough currency to do a massive overhaul of my tree to something more enjoyable. I would really like to focus on Legion, and I have to say… Blight, Legion, and Breach are all awesome on this character. That was really my hope that I would be able to do some of the mechanics that I mostly ignored in the past because they were just not drift-compatible with the Righteous Fire lifestyle. I’ve seen my first Exalted Orb pictured above, but I have yet to see a Divine Orb drop. When I start getting some of those, and a bit more of a liquid position in the currency market… I will feel better about my decisions.

I realize I have not stayed true to the SSF-lite attempt that I originally planned. Truth be told though… I actually have arrived at a point where I enjoy the trade economy in this game. I’ve made several smaller sales and have already set up the infrastructure to be able to sell more stuff as I get access to better items. I am not sure what happened to the person who used to avoid the auction house like the plague. Right now I just don’t have much value that anyone would care about. I have a friend who will probably be willing to knock out the Void Stones for me because I sorta doubt this character is going to be able to do much more than the first two. I have a lot of mapping and farming though before that is even a real concern.

Anyways! I hope you all have a wonderful week. I will be over here in the corner chipping away at this nonsense and completely happy.