Caustic Arrow

This skill started as below average when I acquired it, compared to Elemental Hit, but it's now one of my most used skill past level 15.

The stats at level 1 are quite underwhelming.
Now, at level 6, it does 15 chaos DPS for 3sec. Maybe the 35% converted damage also helps with the better bow I have now...

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Mark_GGG wrote:

Because a skill can only have one base duration - there's one specific stat used for that. The reduction is so that the poison lasts less time than the cloud - otherwise they'd last the exact same time because they're coming from the same base duration.

Want to make this skill more intuitive? A suggestion:

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Poison Arrow

Fires an arrow which explodes in a cloud of poison. Poisonous reactions explode throughout the duration of the cloud dealing chaos damage to nearby enemies.

30% of Physical Damage Added as Chaos Damage
80% less Damage
Base Duration is 1.2 seconds
One reaction explodes every 0.15 seconds

This would give synergy with ranged characters utilizing added cold damage and temporal chains for snares to keep mobs in the poisoned area instead of the current boring implementation of 'fire and forget' poison arrow.

Projectile and bow damage passives would provides paths to improve both the initial explosion (physical dmg + 30% physical added as chaos dmg), in addition to the bursting poisonous reactions occurring for the skill duration across the area of effect.

Concentrated effect, increased area of effect, increased duration, multiple projectiles, added chaos would now provide noticeable and intuitive changes to functionality of the poisoned areas.

added a poison traily thing for this skill. Should come next patch

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Russell wrote:

added a poison traily thing for this skill. Should come next patch

My poisoned arrows drip with anticipation!

Quality bonus sucks, area radius isn't important in this case- I wasted gems :( (give more damage instead!). BUT- with Increase Duration and Increase DoT support gems (can't remember the exact name) , plus Vulnerability debuff- it may be far, far too much.
I think it may be very interesting trail for poison giver/supplier/dealer/?, weapon damage is not so important in this case.. :)
ps. chaos DOT amount- what it depends on?(except for a gem lvl)

Is it just me or it's harder to open crates/barrels/etc. with this skill than it is with Frenzy/basic attacks?

Try this with Greater Multiple Projectiles now. Arguably this is better than using Pierce now, since with 5 PA's you get a nice cone of arrows which then each explode into their own circle of poison awesomeness.

Actual DOT of PA seems unchanged, but with many more arrows to throw around for not that much more mana, it seems more effective than before.

Amplify skill seems to have no effect on chaos DOT? (same summary damage value with and without the skill, Legacy League)