2.0! Fill the screen with 42.5k dps poison clouds! (56.6k with curse) Tanky too! HC & Atziri Viable!

Here is my main source of damage:

My main skill is: Poison Arrow - Pierce - Conc. Effect - Slower projectiles - Empower

The reason I use 100% pierce (I get the rest of the pierce chance from passives) with Poison Arrow is because
1: It allows me to make many poison clouds with one attack without the damage penalty from GMP, lMP, chain, etc., and
2: It gives PA a huge damage boost due to Drillneck (with Drillneck equipped, Pierce gives substantially more dps to the cloud than either faster projectiles or slower projectiles).

I am currently using a 21/20 PA and a lvl 4 empower, however you could still reach substantial damage with a lvl 19 PA and a lvl 2 empower.

A +3 bow is not completely nessesary, however it is very good to damage and I would recommend a 4-link +3 bow over a 5-Link +2 bow. Mine cost 2 ex, however a 4L would barley cost anything. I am currently saving up for a +3 6L with room to add a damage over time mod. I will then add Faster projectiles to my setup.

I use Iron reflexes with this build as I am not a big fan of evasion

For my chest piece, I use:

So I pretty much always have max endurance charges when I get hit as I kill things quite often.

I also use: Vaal grace - CwDT - Immortal call - Increased duration

So that when I do get hit, if it's 440 damage or more, I get up to 5 seconds of physical immunity instead of 3 seconds of onslaught, which I definitely prefer. Vaal grace is in there to get the duration increase, It doesn't trigger when I take 440 damage because it requires too high of a level. I use Vaal grace because I always like to use a Vaal skill and no damaging skills work because my weapon does very little damage on it's own and I didn't allocate any spell damage passives. Even Vaal haste isn't very useful because poison clouds don't stack and the build is mostly a solo build. Vaal grace or Vaal summon skeletons are the only ones that would be at all useful.

Reflect is completely irrelevant because I do chaos DOT, Corrupting blood is also irrelevant because I may or may not hit them and if I do it's once or twice, even proximity shield is irrelevant because the cloud damage counts as originating from where the cloud is located.

Here is my passive tree at level 94:

My plan for later levels is to just grab more small life passives.

Here's the general path I suggest taking while leveling:

Keep in mind that these are really just a suggestion, anything that suites your fancy will do just fine I'm sure.

My gem setup:
Poison arrow - slower projectiles - Concentrated Effect - Pierce - Empower
Clarity
Cast When Damage Taken - Immortal Call - Increased Duration - Vaal Grace
Vulnerability - Increased Area of Effect - Phase Run - Increased Duration
Summon Flame Golem - Portal - Blink Arrow - Faster Casting

My Jewels:

I use this because I don't have enough inteligence if I don't use it. I socket it into the socket on the far right of the tree after the "Projectile Damage" Nodes so as to turn enough Dex into Int, but not much more than is needed as Dex is more useful to my character then Int.


This is a very powerful Jewel for a Poison Arrow character if you can find a good place to put it. I only use one as I can only find one good place for it. I socket it on the right of the tree next to the Shadow right above "Blood Drinker". It overlaps some with the radius of "Fertile Mind" to increase it's effectiveness. This is also part of why I placed Fertile Mind where I did.


For the rest of my Jewels, I shoot for damage and life. Most of them aren't very top-notch, however I crafted the Loath Solace and it ended up pretty darn nice. However, I exalted it and got the Crit chance :/ Oh well.

Normal: Oak
Cruel: Kill all
Merci: Kill all or Oak

I killed all in merci not planning on using the Daresso's Defiance setup I use now, it would probably be better to help Oak, however I don't think it's worth it to spend 20 regrets for the change.

For a Golem, I suggest probably using Fire, however if you are really afraid of dying, or are trying the build in hardcore, a chaos golem might be used instead.

For explanation see Offence.


An overall good chest piece for an Iron reflexes character. For more explanation see Defense.


Nice boots with great move speed (extra-great with corruption)


Just want to get good amounts of AR/EVA, as much life as possible, and a bit of resistances.


Ring's are really where I get all of my resistances. I got two pretty good tri-res ring's with as much life as I could get.


A pretty sweet belt with great Life and Armour and some decent resistance rolls.


My Ammy is very nice, It cost 1 ex and has Great mods: %Armour, and tons and tons of life. The total pseudo is 110.5!


Pretty standard flask here, you want mostly life flask that go fast so you can get your life quickly in a pinch

The reason it says the poison cloud only does 26k dps is because the tooltip doesn't take into account Conc. Effect. You can verify that here.

I have no idea why my tooltip only says PA has a 70% pierce chance, My character sheet says it has 100% and trust me, PA always pierces.

Physical Damage reduction is 66% with 3 charges, 71% with my granite flask, and 83% with both.

I made some gameplay videos before 2.0 to show off how crazy awesome this build is! I might make some more videos in 2.0 if I get around to it. Keep in mind this build got substantially better in 2.0, raising my DPS with curse from 30k to 56.6k. I made three quick videos: (keep in mind that my frame rate drops a significant amount while I'm recording, so I'm not quite playing at my fullest potential)

I don't play in hardcore because my internet has severe lag spikes, however I think this build could be tweaked to work in hardcore. You may not be able to reach the full 30k dps although you could still achieve pretty good dps and you don't have to worry about reflect! You might have to spend a bit more money on good life armor, possibly even Kaom's despite the fire damage part being useless. Although Kaom's is pretty pricey. Regardless, the fact that I ran my first, second, and Third Poorjoy's I've ever done deathless with this build shows that it could probably be tweaked to work in HC.

This build is very fun to play and I've been amazed at the content it has gotten me through, It's very nice to not have any issue with mobs that give itself and nearby allies ES due to Chaos damage. I would greatly appreciate any feedback/suggestions/etc. and feel free to leave a comment or even message me ingame at Sheleq, If I'm on I'd be happy to chat with you.