The Rabid Rhoa Spectral Thrower
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Look at me, I made a another chaos scaling build.... Self deprecation aside, as long as the Rabid Rhoa (http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/The_Rabid_Rhoa) divination card has been available I've wanted to make a build using the claw that it gives. I like the Gemini claw's high attack speed, I like the life and mana on hit, I like the decent base crit, but the fact that it's a claw and claws are just so, "meh", that I never had a go at it. But, with Elreon's flat chaos damage mod and the essence % chaos damage mods I thought I would give it a try. While I went into this build without looking at a lot of other examples, it's not particularly original, you can see elements of it in Mathil's Dreamfeather spectral throw or the "Toxic Bloom" Molten Strike build. Still, I think it's fun, so here we go.
Why
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I did this for a couple of reasons. I have never played a claw build or a spectral throw build that I really liked. This build gave me both. While it's maybe not truly "top tier" is a good solid build. Secondly, I enjoyed that fact that I, as a filthy casual could craft my own weapons. Because of the divination card you can buy Malicious Gemini claws for an alch all day long. I bought a ton of them and proceeded to augment and regal (when the aug was good) until I got what I wanted. You only need four mods on the claws (attack speed, crit chance, crit multi) so with a master craft a normal person can do the crafting themselves without needing a ton of currency. I found this idea very applealing. Pros / Cons
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Pros - Cheap to get started: You can craft your own, near ideal, weapons with realistic levels of currency. - Fast playstyle: You stack attack speed which feels nice to play and gives you super zippy whirling blades. - Reflect is a minimal issue: 95% of your damage is chaos so you can run physical and elemental reflect maps with no problem. Cons - Expensive to perfect: While you can get a basic version of this build up and running on the cheap, to really perfect it will be very expensive. The jewelry, most notably, is tough to get. Finding/crafting rings and an amulet with the % chaos essence mod, plus life, plus some accuracy, plus whatever stats you need (int typically) plus some resists, plus.... These are few and far between. It does give you goals to aim for, though, which is not a terrible thing. - It's not CI: I'm sure a person could make this an ES based build but it would be less than idea. I'm playing as a evasion/dodge life based character and the defense is just "ok". Theory
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For anyone who's played the game recently, the theory should be pretty obvious. Stack a lot of flat chaos damage on gear and using the added chaos damage gem and then scale that flat damage through high attack speed, increased chaos damage, and increased projectile damage. I'm sure this build could be done a number of different ways, I chose to go Assassin to get the power charge generation and high crit chance, which saves me from having to use the increased critical strikes gem. The bleed and poison ascendancy passives are helpful as well though this build would shine with a higher chance to poison. My gear choices, though, make that somewhat difficult. This said, the insightful exile could see this build being done as a Ranger or even a Duelist and still being successful. Passive Tree Leveling
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I chose to level with claws and the added chaos gem (when I could get it) and it was less than ideal. The damage while leveling was just not quite there. I think a much better route would be to use something like Ethereal Knives attached to added chaos and take advantage of the projectile and chaos damage passives on the tree while leveling. Once you are high enough level to use your Gemini Claws you can start dumping points into the claw passives. There's probably better ways but I ground through the levels as best I could and made do without terrible trouble. Gear
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As you've no doubt guessed, this is a claw build. When crafting your Malicious Gemini Claws from the divination card you're looking to hit three stats: attack speed, crit chance and crit multi. I crafted one claw from scratch myself, which was just ok: Another one I bought for a few chaos which already had T1 attack speed on it and got super lucky with my regal: This is about as ideal of a claw as you could hope for. I mean, in some crazy, money is no object world, you'd craft these as high physical DPS claws that include the chaos damage too, but that's just not going to happen. My other interesting gear choice is the gloves. I chose to go with Gripped Gloves rolled with the more attack speed essence mod: I use these as my main AOE clear spectral throw. The 20% more attack speed is about as good as a level 20 increased attack speed gem which makes this more or less like using a 5 link. I sacrifice a bit of DPS doing this but it allows me to keep my single target setup on a 6 link for maximum boss killing efficiency. 95% of the time I have plenty of damage to clear maps and, when it runs a little low, I can throw my AOE setup into the 6 link and it's all good. Otherwise, the rest of the gear is what you'd expect. Life, resists, evasion, crit/crit multi where you can get it. Gem Links
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Main AOE: Spectral Throw - Added Chaos - Void Manipulation - GMP (in more attack speed gloves) Single Target: Spectral Throw - Added Chaos - Void Manipulation - Faster Attacks - Slower Projectiles - Poison / Point Blank (Despite getting poison chance from the Assassin ascendancy I find the 100% poison chance from gem to give me better boss killing power than the added base damage provided by Point Blank. Yes, it's somewhat wasteful, but I like the way it feels) Auras: Grace Curse: Warlord's Mark on Blasphemy The leach, stun, and endurance charge generation is too good to pass up. If I didn't use this I'd probably run Arctic Armour for the added defense. Mobility: Whirling Blades - Faster Attacks - Fortify - Blood Magic Golem: I use lightning golem for the attack speed but you can't go wrong with any golem as they'd all provide useful benefits for this build. Vaal Skill: Vaal Haste - Increased Duration (Because boss killing) Misc: Blood Rage (more attack speed and frenzy charge generation). Decoy Totem (because boss killing). Flasks
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- One instant and one fast regen life flask for general purpose staying alive. - A stibnite and basalt flask for defense. I pop both during tough encounters, the stibnite to avoid as many hits as posible, and the basalt to deal with the ones that break through. - Silver flask for DPS Bandits
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Normal - Life from Oak Cruel - Attack speed from Kraityn Merciless - Power Charge from Alira Life is a no brainer in normal. Attack speed could be swapped out for a passive if that's your fancy. Power charge could be swapped for a passive point or Frenzy charge if you can get some awesome gear with lots of crit on it. Video
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Final Thoughts
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While this is not the strongest build out there I'm happy with how it came out. It's easy enough for a regular person to get going but has enough gear customization potential that you can push it a long way. Being a filthy casual I've yet to get to the Guardians and/or Shaper yet and I'm not sure this will be the build to do it. It has excellent single target DPS but as an evasion build build I think it would need "crazy bonkers" single target DPS to kill bosses fast enough to have a chance to survive the encounter without getting one shotted too many times. Still, it's fun to play and it fulfilled my goals of being a self-craftable, claw-based build that does solid damage and doesn't die too much. With this, I am content. Last edited by SerialThriller37#4957 on Oct 29, 2016, 3:55:29 PM Last bumped on Sep 3, 2017, 6:05:04 PM
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Video now included in main post.
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Going to try this leveling today. What do you think about using a rat's nest?
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" Thanks for hitting me up in game, I was glad to know someone found this useful... In general, there are a lot of uniques which could be great for this build. Rat's nest would add a lot of DPS. Maligaro's or Facebreakers could be good gloves to augment your crit (at the expense of the attack speed essence craft). But these all give up defense, which this, as a life and evasion build needs desperately. I didn't want to give up the life and resists that good rares gave me in these slots. Unique chests could be a good option too. Kintsugi or Lightning Coil would be instant defensive upgrades but they come at a big price premium and they do give up some life and resists, too, though maybe the added defensive stats of those chests make up for it. This is a crit build, though, and gearing is always tricky. Getting crit and life and resists, and accuracy, and open crafting slots for chaos damage, and strength and intelligence and, well, things are tight. Also, the main guide is updated with bandit choices too. |
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Looks solid. Going to give it a shot and see what all I can come up with. Good job, Al.
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" Cool man, hope you have fun with it. |
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Sorry for the noob question since I'm just a newbie
It's just I'm currently leveling up with spectral throw and I can't find a way to keep the mana up. Can you show me the nodes or which item to get asap so that my character doesn't thirst for mana anymore? Thank you. P/S: I am at lv60 and have tried putting warlord's mark on but it still doesn't work out |
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" Keeping mana up while leveling is actually a bit of a pain. There are three ways to maintain mana - regeneration, leach, and "on hit". For a build like this which doesn't have a lot of access to mana regen nodes and attacks pretty quickly (thus depleting your mana quickly) regen is no good. Mana leach works by giving you portion the damage you deal back as mana at a specified rate. This is problematic while leveling for two reasons. Early in the game you do not do a great deal of damage. If your damage is too low you simply can't leach enough mana to sustain your attacks. As well, you can only leach mana back at a certain rate. It's possible that an attack does enough damage to refill your mana after use, but if your attack speed is too high your mana will not refill quickly enough to sustain continued attacking, even if you're hitting monsters with your attacks. Helpful mana leach nodes on the tree are "Spirit Void" near the duelist area and "Essence Sap" near the ranger area. But, again, if you're damage is too low then leach will not help you quite yet. Finally, there's mana gained on hit. One of the reasons I liked this build was the mana gain on hit implicit on the Maraketh claws (Double, Twin, and Gemini Claws). This gives you mana instantly any time one of your attacks hits an enemy and is a good way to sustain your skills while your damage is too low to leach effectively while leveling. For this build specifically I did not take any mana leach nodes but rely on the combination of mana leach from Warlord's Mark and the mana gained on hit from the Gemini claws to sustain my mana. But, until you can equip the Gemini claw it's a little tough. You just need to slog through with a mana flask until the build comes together. Hope this helps. |
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For fun I did a small respect of this character and gave it a whirl with Blade Flurry. This will come as no surprise, but it's also very strong.
Spec out of the projectile nodes and replace them with poison damage / damage over time and off we go. Current six link is Blade Flurry, Faster Attacks, Void Manipulation, Added Chaos, Increased AOE, Poison. This skill is great fun, I hope it doesn't get nerfed into the ground. |
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How's this build doing in 3.0? I've always wanted to give this a try either ST or BF
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