3.6.3, and the great Map Drop Fallacy

[Chadvoluted]

Since GGG stated that they had increased Map Drop Rates, and then allowed them to drop from any synthesized enemy in memories, I've started tabulating my experiences in maps and memories.

So far, the data (while an admittedly small sample size at this point) shows that "more" maps are dropping, but they are heavily skewed towards lower tier, or same tier maps. The ability to progress, seems to be very limited.

[Concillian]

Now that I've played some after my week of vacation, it feels like maps are indeed dropping more than they were prior to both the map drop increase and the synth changes, but it still feels lower than last league. I am occasionally using vaals, chisels and sextants, etc... in like T6 / 7 maps.

I will say that the number of maps from a 120 quant corrupted map with a fragment and a sextant consistently feels like WAY more than a ~50% quant alch and go map, but I also feel like ~50% quant alch and go was better for yellows than it is right now. It's not THAT far off though. I do remember getting stuck a few times last league, needing to drop down a tier and grind 20 or 30 maps to rebuild the pool of the next higher tier. It is meant to be a grind.

It doesn't help that I've managed to consistently screw up the tier I place my daily Zana missions on like half the days this league, but that's my own fault at least.

[Chadvoluted]

So far, I have data on

30 maps - T4, T5 (Including the few times that I've encountered Zana. She's consistently sat in T5 Maps that I've never seen, so I haven't been able to purposefully run her)
12 Nexus Memories Comparable level zones to the maps
1 Temple of Atzoatl Run at T4 Level.

In those 30 maps, I've received:

3 Maps of a tier higher
12 maps of same tier
14 maps of lower tier

IN the Nexus, I have received

1 Map same tier
2 maps lower tier

In the Atzoatl Temple, I had 7 same tier maps drop, because I had level the cartography room up.

That still puts me in a -10 hole. I've never had this before. Maybe it's because I don't play league often enough. But so far, the White / Yellow Map Drop in League is worse than Red Maps were in Standard Last Patch.

Maybe I'm just the one stuck on the low end of the RNG this patch? But man, this is awful. Coupled with the other problems that the game has right now, I'm not sure I'm going to stick around post 3.7. They're going to have to seriously WOW me at this point.

[Concillian]

I just realized there's a bit of a way to track it based on the challenges. The IIQ challenge tells you a bit about how much you have to map before you unlock a certain tier. Like I did my first T8 map this morning and My IIQ is about 11,000, which means at an average of 50 or so IIQ per map would put me at having needed to do ~200-220 maps to get to T8. I'd consider only T6 to be where I have enough maps to have a "solid footing" right now.

I need to make my mapping faster, I need to stop vendoring so many rares for alt shards, got 2 gilded sulphite scarabs from a safehouse yesterday and had a 3rd from a while ago. They sold for 210c, so I can buy the alts I need (Thank you Cameria. Gilded sulphite scarabs this league... I mean they were good last league, but effectively 2 scarabs = 1 ex? no, not that good last league.) I feel like I just need sheer volume of maps to work through the statistical rough patches if doing alch and go. It seems clear that red maps 'alch and go' isn't going to do so well, especially since Zana's map sales won't be bought for my relatively unused chance orbs anymore, and there's no "different map of the same tier" zana mod. So I'm building my chisel and Vaal orb stocks (~180 / 40 so far.)

Is your info from alch and go? Anything else you're doing for quantity?

[Concillian]

Shoju... saw your thread in the official forums. Ouch. Not sure what you were expecting from that.

You should note that the SSF person who responded was at ~25k %IIQ on their maps. You're in a dry spell and I don't think GGG is going to suddenly bump up map access anytime soon. I think you either need to accept that you need to grind a lot more than you are doing, or just buy some of your progression to get your atlas bonus up. I feel like when mine was at that level it was rougher than it is now, when my bonus is ~80% or so. Still I've done about 4000-4500% IIQ in maps between now and my last post ( 5 days) which is about 2/3rds of the total IIQ you've done all league.

In the early tiers I ran through my troughs, playing semi-SSF, but now that I have a decent amount of currency and T9 ish maps are like 1c each, I bought 20 Vaal Pyramids to keep up my stores. I mean, I will likely need to buy Vaal orbs for corrupting reds, so this just means I buy the maps instead and get div card drops that give me the Vaal orbs I need and get some maps as a side benefit. Vaal Pyramid is also good because 3 end bosses means I can use a frag per map to further boost quant and have 3 good chances at dropping a fragment for the next map.

I also noted that you aren't running any un-id'ed maps. I love me some un-id'ed maps.

Still though, I don't think you're going to find much community sympathy for wanting to mostly SSF your atlas in a trade league and then complaining about map drops. Drop rates have definitely decreased as witnessed by poe.ninja price graphs of high tier maps (T16s were 24c before march 17, now 17c, T15 maps were ~15c, now ~7)

[Chadvoluted]

I think I'm just done with Synthesis. Map Drops aren't this terrible in Standard, I don't have to fight for progression there, and over the weekend it was far easier to trade. I'm miserable in Synthesis. Fun char, proved that my build works on a Scion, it's just as tanky as I thought, and as far as I can tell, comparable clear speed, but this league is not fun for me.

[Chadvoluted]

Update:
quit Synthesis. Back to Standard. Having a LOT more fun, even with having to figure out how to make things work in the wake of 3.6.