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In this Path of Exile guide, we want to do is showcase the top 5 maps to run in patch 3.17, this is a fair way into the league and we've had a bit of time to experiment with things now, get a bit of a sense as to what divination cards got moved to what new locations and you get a bit of a sense as to how the new mechanics of the 3.17 atlas work.
With the new influence types, you can constrain the alter choices that are available by strategic timing of when you kill a map boss, this is easier to do in some map tilesets and others depending upon where the boss is. As an example for the expedition, the min-max way to do it is to kill the map boss first before you encounter any of the altars, then all of the altars will give you the option of a player affecting mod, some of which will juice up the loot of the expedition encounter. If you kill a map boss after encountering most of the altars in the region, then some of them will not give you a player affecting debuff and as a result, you will get less loot out of your expedition. So other strategies may want to do the exact opposite and kill the map boss dead last after clicking every single alter, and again some of the various map layouts will suit that style better than others. So in this situation what you want to do is to maximize eldritch POE currency drops, for example, you will want to prioritize clicking every single alter, select as many things as possible that make the map boss harder, and then when you do kill a map boss you will receive more eldritch currency than you would otherwise receive. Predictable boss locations give you agency here and it's a big factor in what makes a map make this list.
Related Read:
PoE 3.18 Best Maps To Farm - Top 8 Maps To Favourite in Path of Exile 3.18 League
Top 1 - Promenade (Patient, Dying Anguish Card)
Promenade is a tower-esque layout in the sense that it is very long and straightforward although, it doesn't have the doors either. It's very linear with only tiny amounts of the back but minus some of the corners that plague tower, still has corners but there are just not very many of them. This has the best divination cards of any map in the game in our opinion, it has the patient and dying anguish which is both somewhat common. Now the patient is a 25 chaos drop, dying anguish is a five chaos each drop especially if you get them in bulk, but the fact that you get both of them makes it better than any other map that's around. The boss is completely trivial in this encounter once you know what to expect and that makes things better too.
Top 2 - Tower (Nurse Card)
Tower is an extraordinarily good map, it has a great divination card in the nurse - the nurse is 164th of a headhunter, and whilst this card is rare it still adds an appreciable amount to the expected value of every single map that you run. You'll find that if you're running towers with polished divination scarabs, you should average about 10 to 15 chaos worth of nurses every single map that you do, and the more that you juice it up beyond that even more and more you will end up making from these nurse cards. That said you will have dry spells, you will sometimes go 30 maps without a nurse sometimes and that's going to be really painful when it happens.
Tower lost the important divination card that it had in 3.16, it used to have the wretched. A lot of maps gained new divination cards in 317, tower went the other way and got worse, however even without the wretched, the nurse is enough to carry this map and make it definitely worth your while considering.
This is a straightforward layout, that's broken down into about five sections which are all pretty much corridors that bend around a little bit. It has corners that you can use tactically if you wind up in a situation where you bite off more than you can chew in a fight. However those very corners make it bad for breach encounters and for legion encounters, that's because they can constrain the amount of space that's available for monsters spawning and as a result, sometimes you will feel like you get a lot fewer monsters with those mechanics. We would not recommend running a tower with a breach strategy at all, if you're interested in a breach strategy then consider one of the maps later on this list like a promenade.
The boss of the tower is the worst part of the map, it is always dead last and the fight itself is awful. With the new eldritch influences, you are definitely going to want to kill the boss when you've juiced it up. When you've clicked Ulta mods that say that it's going to drop additional rewards, you're going to want to kill it. The problem with the tower boss is that it just takes ages, it's a three-phase fight: the middle phase will often go into an extended invulnerability phase and the third phase has a couple of lethal attacks that you have to dodge at all costs. So for that reason, we have to say that tower is a very bad map from a boss's perspective.
Top 3 - Cemetery (Brother’s Stash Card)
Cemetery is a mixture of cove and tower in some ways, now this has a great divination card which calls back to Tower, it has brothers stash which is a single set so it's a card as a singleton card that is its own set and it gives you five exalted orb
now. This card is genuinely rare but it's quite a bit more common than any other three plus exalt card, so you will see it occasionally but it is still rare trait when it drops. The boss of this map is easy once you know the fight, the key thing you need to know to do this fight is that when it's roaring the most dangerous thing isn't the boss itself, it is the spinning that's been that's coming out of the cracks on the ground. It can be very hard to see but that is the thing that will kill you in the growth cool fight. It's a somewhat predictable layout less so than tower but more so than coves, there are a few corners in this map but not quite none and so it's not an STM map for breaches but it is pretty good.
Top 4 - Dunes (Breach/Legion)
Dunes is the next great map to farm, this has the same strengths as coves, it's better for breach and legion and that's because it is just so wide open, there is more running around however which is generally a net negative. We would suggest this map for certain if you are playing a deadeye character. The boss of this map can be a little bit lethal while you're learning it, it's a very easy fight that seems like it's based on hilock, the thing that you need to watch out for though is that when he jumps on you, does a leap slam on you, and spawns a bunch of zombies at your feet when those zombies die, they will leave absolutely lethal caustic ground at their feet. If you instantly kill them, then you will wind up in a world of hurt if you get hit by this attack. Basically, if you see the boss sleep slamming at you, you need to get out of the way.
Top 5 - Ashen Wood
Ashen Wood has the advantage of being able to be horizon into, so you take any T16 map doesn't matter how what its void stone count is apply horizon orbs to it and on average within 4.2 horizon orbs, you will end up with an ashen wood. The layout here combines the open nature of dunes with the compactness and unclear boss location of coves, there is less running around than there is in the dunes map and the boss is trivial. You would really like this map with beyond strategies because it's so compact and as a result you will find it just works really well all the monsters feel quite close to each other in ash wood and that's something we think is really useful. Another thing with ash wood that is quite attrative is that you have some of towers benefits of having corners that you can use tactically, there's a number of low walls in there that you can jump over and when you find those, you can zap around then to use them technically in a fight and that can help make you more able to survive if you bite off more than you can chew.
