Caustic Arrow

I'm currently trying a life regen Scion with Deadeye(for aoe) and Trickster (for regen after kill).

Defensive wise its a great skill, but it really needs some love in damage department.

While leveling, I had to be +4levels during Act4 with a +1 4L bow to do any damage to whites. Rares are still a challenge.

+1 for buff.

With the ED nerfs in beta (poison nerfed, Decay nerfed) Ca is kinda struggling, especially in the single target department. Its not even that great of an AoE skill damage wise, but killing map bosses is way too much struggle.
Running Occultist for the minus 20 chaos res, took most relevant damage nodes (missing Templar Area dmg nodes and Fury Bolts in duelist, but that not a reasonable travel for me, got all the rest, including anger and shadow starts). On a plus 2 5l bow (no empower sadly), its like 7k dps lvl17 gem. Kinda sad flaccid panda when it comes to deeps

How will CA work with the new Decay support gem?
Will the Chaos Cloud inflict the decay damage of the support gem or only the initial hit?

I'm assuming decay is just like before, applied on hit.

So you'll probably want a linked up secondary gem, such as frenzy or something just to hit stuff, and apply a strong decay (it is scaled by supports, right?).

You could also probably link decay to caustic arrow, if you got good enough aoe dmg already, but last time i made caustic arrow character, i had like very little accuracy on gear and tree and consequently had like 67% estimated hit rate at lvl 86 or something.

I guess on a plus side if you go like berserker/partial abyssal cry or something you can get RT :)

Playing CA atm with lv 28 gem and the damage is too damn low. please do something, GGG!

I've always loved Caustic arrow ever since it was poison arrow and some time before that. I think it has always been a good skill and I've played it almost every league, including harbinger. Since there are so many threshhold jewels coming into existence, I'd like to suggest a few interesting mods that might make Caustic arrow a more interesting skill.

Caustic Arrow's area increases over time.
Caustic Arrow deals x% increased damage over time, decreasing over time.
Everyone knows gasses expand to fill its container. Both of these mods fit the gas theme and would be really interesting to interact with. I have doubts about implementation though, I don't think I've seen mechanics like these in game.

Caustic Arrow fires an extra projectile.
This is a really nice QoL buff but the only ways to get it are troublesome and expensive. By having it on a jewel it would be much easier.

Caustic Arrow hits cannot be evaded.
Piercing is a common mod to get on Caustic arrow, but this build gets very little accuracy so you will often miss and it feels bad. Making Caustic Arrow always hit would be a great QoL buff without being overbearing since it is not really an attack skill, but a spell disguised as an attack.

Enemies affected by Caustic Arrow are hindered for x seconds.
Since Caustic arrow is a genuine AoE skill, fast enemies that can leave the area are quite pesky. This QoL buff overlaps with Blight but would be helpful for both offense and defence; and it is thematically similar to laughing gas or nerve gas.

Thank you for reading! Anyone else have ideas for threshhold jewels?

I have a Trickster, with 6L +3 bow, lvl 4 empower and lvl 21 Caustic Arrow + ~430% increase with gear and passives (unbuffed). This means it is the top end of investment possible for damage, and dps is only at 60k (unbuffed). Which is fine for normal mapping, but it doesn't give an easy access to the endgame (it is hard and long, and not rewarding).

I have troubles understanding how a skill can lack dps when the best possible gear and passives are used, while other skills (that I won't name) can trivialize the game with budget gear.

I pretty sure Caustic Arrow should do at least the equivalent of one more link of dps of what it does right now to feel rewarded for the investment. Or maybe it is my bad for not playing Berserker?

Right now the BIS gear feels like average gear, and average gear feels like shit gear.

I too think it should have an additional utility effect (like slowing enemies in the cloud, or reducing chaos resistance, etc...).


Also, needless to say that without leveling gear leveling with CA feels awful.



Actually, being able to stack clouds should solve the problem.

i always play caustic arrow now have around 70k cloud dps but bosses take ages to kill i would like a treshhold jewel with -chaos ressistence against unique monsters i think that would solve the problem with the slow boss killing

I wanted to throw my hat in the pool for this skill, as it is one of my favorites. It really needs some love. The damage is simply too low and has been for quite some time now. Please consider adjusting it.

The damage for this skill is so terrible...it takes fucking ages to kill a boss