Caustic Arrow

Which skill do you mean when you say Amplify? Unless I'm blind, I can't find that skill.

As far as I know, the only gems that have an actual skill effect on PA are Increased Duration and Increased Area of Effect. There are no supports that modify its DOT, even Added Chaos Damage (sadly).

I'd like to see that changed so that Added Chaos works, or something to make it not so linear. It's a fun skill but very linear in its progression. Basically get a bow with +1 to bow skills and IAS, and you're done, other than sockets.

Amplify is a passive :) And there is one support gem for PA DOT damage- Concentrate Area of Effect (however, never seen any), plus Vulnerability debuff

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Alegor wrote:

And there is one support gem for PA DOT damage- Concentrate Area of Effect

Concentrate effect does not increase the damage of the poison debuff, only shrinks the area.

I've been using Poison Arrow builds for awhile now and I have some useful feedback.

My level 60 Poison Arrow build had absolutely no problems in chaos right from the start (at level 56); multiple runs no deaths but a couple close calls due to being over confident. All with non veteran and quite noobly gear (aside from the +1 Bow Mod). My passives worth noting is Evasion, runspeed and skill duration nodes with Arrow Dodging, Hexmaster, and Whispers of Doom.

I want to side note that the current thinking, especially apparent in global chat, is that evasion is not desirable over armor or iron reflexes. This couldn't be farther from the truth. You need at least decent twitch skill to go from survivable to thriving, but that would be expected from a high mobility class. Evasion seems about right.

So as it stands it works great. But yes, it's a "one trick pony" with nothing substantial to build upon. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it makes it easier to focus on boosting other desirable boosts such as defense, single target damage, magic find, secondary skills, etc. So it can be thought of either a negative or a positive.

We know there's very little that affects the DOT portion of this skill in either passives or gems. We would like to see some DOT options, but don't want it or future DOT skills to be overpowered. The multiple projectiles, piercing and skill duration work great. I'm sure you guys (GGG) have considered making existing gems work (Concentrate AOE, Added Chaos, Leech, etc), or adding Chaos/Poison Damage or debuff passives / gems. I have good ideas, I just don't want to list them yet -- hoping to see a bit more 'direction' on where you may or may not take this skill.

I also don't want to list what could potentially be taken away for balancing, I'm sure you know all the obvious ones like less duration / damage, no initial damage, etc. Also I see it would be tricky rolling chaos into the 'elemental' category. It could work, but not without seriously revamping the damage output and much testing with different passive trees.

However I would like some clarification on:
Item Quantity / Rarity. Does it work on the DOT portion? Very hard to test. When I test it pure (i.e. no other MF items, just the gem supports) it's not enough to really be able to tell. There's SO many support gems that ONLY work on PA's initial damage, this is something that needs clarified. Currently none of the Leeching, Added Damage, etc works on the DOT, so there's no reason to believe the Item Quantity/Rarity does.

I would also like to report it seems that the cloud stays on the ground longer than it's supposed to. My skill duration (when in Magic Find mode) is 3.9 seconds. It's on the ground for what appears to be at least 8 seconds, and if mobs walk in a different cloud (from multiple projectiles) anytime it refreshes their DOT.

P

Could anyone post DOT damage on higher lvls?
14lvl: 430
15lvl: 505
..?

lvl 16 is 594

lvl 14: 430 (+?)
lvl 15: 505 (+75)
lvl 16: 594 (+89)
lvl 17: 643 (+49)
lvl 18: 696 (+53)

?? I've expected the difference to rise with lvl?? so lvl 19->20 is like 10?

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Psomm wrote:

I've been using Poison Arrow builds for awhile now and I have some useful feedback.

My level 60 Poison Arrow build had absolutely no problems in chaos right from the start (at level 56); multiple runs no deaths but a couple close calls due to being over confident. All with non veteran and quite noobly gear (aside from the +1 Bow Mod). My passives worth noting is Evasion, runspeed and skill duration nodes with Arrow Dodging, Hexmaster, and Whispers of Doom.


P

Where do u find this Hexmaster and Whispers of Doom?



edit:
nevermind i found them.. web didnt refresh.

I still think the "explosion at target position" is a bit weird/inconsistent, though it doesnt really matter too much.
If used with multishot or pierce, the initial arrow will always explode at the target point, as opposed to the rest who will only explode when they hit something. This also applies to a poison arrow that pierces a target before it's destination, causing it to then travel past it's original destination (unless it hits another target). Also, controlling both multiple projectiles spread and poison arrow target can be a bit conflicting, though it's barely a problem.

Other than that, the skill seems very potent and is from my experience a lot less mana intensive than Lightning Arrow.

My Ranger Flashiiva uses this skill too and i have some questions about it. I think they can only answered by a Dev.

I use this Bow with Poison Arrow, +Rarity, + Quantity, Pierce.



My Build has the Ranger Area +Skillduration nodes.

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1.Is it right that the basedmg of the poisons DoT can't be modified by any passive, support gem or gear mod?

2.The DoT is only caused by the cloud, not the projectile?

3.Does quantity/rarity bonus affect killing blows by the DoT?

4.The DoT doesn't stack and is just refreshed by the cloud. What happens if two Ranger in a Party use Poison Arrow, does the DoT stack or only the strongest deals damage?

5.If i use two Skillgems of Posion Arrow, one lvl 14 and the other lvl 15. Does the DoTs stack?

6.In a huge party the skills DoT loses power due non scaling(Auras, Charges). Are there any plans to change this in future?

7.Is the DoT able to be a critical?