Caustic Arrow

I attempted to make a Ranger focusing on Using Poison Arrow's AoE poison cloud as a main source of clearing minions but due to the fact that there are no (that I could find atleast) passive points that actually allow you to increase poison/chaos damage in reach of the Rangers starting point the skill quickly fell off and around the Prison's Gate area it was nearly useless. Shame for such a fun skill to fall off so soon.

I'm a level 50 ranger focusing on Poison Arrow. The previous poster is correct in that it kind of sucks early on, but I've been using it for about 20 levels or so and it does decently later on, especially in conjunction with Vulnerability.

I have a mid-20s level Ranger, and I'm very impressed with how useful this skill is in comparison to its 9.3 version.
I understand that the "detonation" aspect of it being targetable is intentional, but I find it kind of annoying - would prefer it to be targeted like a regular attack and then have the poison cloud occur wherever the arrow strikes - similar in effect to Fireball.

While using Multiple Projectile on this skill, is it supposed to not spread poison clouds with the additional projectiles?

With the recent Hardcore challenge race, I decided to give a bow ranger a shot. Poison Arrow was the main skill I utilized, and I found the single target damage bonus to be quite nice early on. However, I definitely agree with others that the scaling (early on) with the Poison Arrow's cloud could use a little bump.

It was from level 5 to 6 that I found the cloud to suddenly start being really good. I did end up taking the +45% skill duration passives, which effects both the duration of the cloud, and the duration of the poison when the enemy leaves the cloud (At least, that's I assume the 'skill duration' and 'buff duration' separate values refer to in the skill tooltip, it matched up to my experience in-game at least).

I found the overall Mana cost as it leveled up to be quite manageable, and worthwhile for it. I do have a question though, I didn't see anywhere to boost the poison cloud's chaos damage in the passive skill tree. Is it possible that I missed it? If so where? If not, why is there no way to boost the damage?


The only other thing that I really wanted to comment on is that I agree with DraconicBlessing. Compared to other "Projectile" skills (split shot, elemental hit, fireball, icespear, etc) I found it "odd" that the arrow would detonate at where I aimed it at. THis lead to me trying to aim behind enemies instead of targeting them directly since there was a number of times I'd aim at them directly, and it would appear as if the arrow despawned created the poison cloud right before hitting the enemy. In these cases after firing the arrow a couple times, if the enemy remained stationary it'd keep missing, and I'd have to move slightly before the arrow would actually hit them. So, I definitely agree that the functionality of this should be changed to match fireballs and the other projectiles to provide it with consistency to other projectile skills while still allowing it to be unique from them (as to my knowledge, no other projectile skill leaves a patch on the ground that does damage even if the enemy exits the patch!).

Lvl 50+ frenzy ranger.
Xaece and others are absolutely correct.
Poison arrow mechanic is odd but skill is still useful.
I added skill duration passive and pierce & duration inc mods and this thing leaves poison clouds everywhere.
Does nice damage on whites, but hard to add useful mods when nothing Inc damage of clouds.
Still use as an opener though.

Update: Am now level 42-ish. This skill is incredible.
I was one-shotting guys at the end of Cruel (albeit, over time) but I absolutely love its new power level.
I also think its great how I can use it more less without discrimination - no need to fear elem/phys reflect mobs.

If you use the Pierce support gem and/or the chance to pierce passives then when you aim at a monster with Poison Arrow, you might pierce the mob, leaving a cloud around the pierced target and the arrow will keep flying, potentially piercing more enemies (=more clouds) and leaving a last cloud on the final impact (max. range, didn't pierce or a wall). I realy like this feature, even if it wasn't intended to work like this.

It can also clear mobs behind corners with the corner bug.

It would be interesting if the Added Cold Damage gem worked with the cloud too. :D

Lvl 42 bow ranger with +bow dmg passives mainly. Works like a charm on normal monsters around the end of Act 2, Cruel. I might try the skill duration passives too, sounds realy good.