Budget Platinum

[Splendor]

Decided to give Platinum a whirl on a pretty tight gem budget to see what was possible. Started the event with 860 gems total. By collecting dailies and playing I've farmed additional gems and have spent a total of 1515 gems:

245 - basic unlocks

15 - buying gold at the start of map 1-1

8 - leveling fireball to 3 at the start of map 1-1

400 - 2nd upgrade slot

150 - crafting crates (1 apprentice for 50, 1 expert for 100)

500 - Maggie

80 - 4 reforges changing exp to a usable stat for push (chose armor on 2 for lack of better options, LoH on 1, and AR on the other)

117 - 2 sockets, belt and trinket (it's definitely worth noting, for those unaware, that adding sockets to belts, bracers, trinkets, and capes is cheaper than set armor and weapons)

To start I ran story up to Eileen with no booster until the mushroom stew (stew after until lvl 40, replacing stew with 200%), I didn't buy an MoT crate so I ran fireball with VotWS and Firelily. Made it to 70 in a little under 20 minutes but already had Eileen. Farmed with dfa up 80, then switched to beam. Had decent luck with bracer crafting at first, managed a 467% beam epic 73 early on and incredible luck later on with a 466% leg followed by a 486% leg on back to back crafts! But that's basically as far as my crafting luck extended because I had a pitiful start chasing staffs and an early 74 that rolled with the worst possible dmg , I finally did get a decent 75 on my 11th craft and eventually crafted a 76 tome on craft 19, but with my budget approach it took a lot of farming with pretty bad gear before I was even able to craft those. My crafts so far have gone: 2342322324522532326242233224322 The gameplay itself however has been great with the addition of spirit stones, and I'm really feeling their impact in this low-budget, bad-gear approach I'm taking, mixing and matching them provides a lot of nice flexibility too. I used 1 ephemeral and 2 crafted jewelry pieces for farming with exp/eg and for Push I crafted 1 decent ring and used 2 ephemerals, I might skip this next platinum (if I play) because it left me with some tough gemstone choices and not enough amethysts to craft an obfuscation Still, I would call this anb a huge success so far overall, I've managed to farming 1720 cls and have now pushed through 145 in good time. I have just under 22 minutes of event timer left, my 145 run opened 147 and if everything goes right I should have a shot at 150 (because as most of you know, if you start a trial before your event timer runs out the trial will still count if you clear it successfully even if your timer expires during the trial). That is all, hope you all have a wonderful anb!

[Mical66]

Not a mage player, but great post, makes me want to give it a try, but i need to finish learning and buying all recipes.

[Halbrad]

Great post, well played and thanks for sharing! But a bit surprised to see that 1500 gems is considered 'budget'. There certainly have been a few anbs where a spent more, but this would still be in my top25%

[Splendor]

Yeah, I guess it's all relative, I just know a lot of the players I've talked to and pretty much all of the players vying for top10-top25 finishes buy at least 1 2,500 gem crate and usually spend 5k+ (some much more) The other Platinum I played in I spent ~4500 gems and finished with trial 152 in the top 10, so this was an attempt for me to see what I could do spending only around 1/3 of that amount. Part of why I consider this budget is also that during an anb you can collect 1,000 gems just by doing dailies, and just by playing you'll easily farm more, so spending 1,500 in an anb would essentially require no farming ahead of time (and obviously no purchases).

[WarriorSeven]

I agree -- a very nice summary by Splendor as a future aid/guide! I also like the "gem budget" approach with its savvy use of time and resources that demonstrates to us all that it is entirely possible to advance to excellent Trial Levels.

My first Platinum, and will not end up anywhere near Splendor's level, but I learned a lot by suffering through my unforgiving and unforced errors.

This ANB indeed teaches much about the efficient use of time to garner just the right amount of resources to maximize toon capabilities in such a short playtime period. Traditional ANB gameplay will not cut it, as you soon realize you must balance precious playtime against acquiring XP, gold, and abilities to build up your toon quickly. The end build may not be perfect -- unless, of course, you have a big budget of gems -- but as proven above, that's not necessary to place high in Trials.

Will likely give it a another chance the next time around, knowing there is at least one working model that works well!

[LordS-k]

What splendor clearly shows is that you don't have to start with many gems.
Many players seem to forget that during the event itself you get a lot of gems as well: dailies, drops, and daily rewards. well done, you did way better thrn my first hunter did, i wont even reach 1500

[papa jim]

We can't compare ourselves to splendor, he is one of the master mages.

[Splendor]

Just to update, I ended up finishing on 149, was close to a shot at 150 but the lack of obfuscation was felt on 147 when TBD 1-shotted me with an overflow and then insta-killed me 2 more times before I could muster up enough elemental fury stacks to get back in the fight. I still managed to clear 147 in ~8 minutes (after that I waited for some upgrades to boost synergy and collected a few dailies worth of gems to buy gold to craft an obfuscation), but a 7 minute 148 and an 8:26 149 meant I was just out of time Looks like I'm #12 on the lb at the moment, not quite the top10 I was hoping for but I'm still pretty satisfied, maybe if I try this again I'll leave a little more time for pushing (had around 49 min when I started).