The Plague - Chaos Damage DoT / Tank Build

I'm not going to make this a super long guide or anything, I just wanted to show off my build some that I've been using, and haven't really seen it around.

It is based off of Poison Arrow and Viper Strike.

The play style of the build is basically get as many monsters as you can to chase you and throw out a couple clouds which will destroy all the white monsters. I Viper Strike all the blues and rares, and drop bear traps on the rares also. I also Dominating Blow all the rare monsters.

Here is my build:


So my skill sets are:


Here is the equipment I use and why the Chaos Damage is increased:


I have 5141 HP before Grace, and 25,000 armour and +83 to Elemental resists because of Purity.

Gameplay Video:


Overall, it's not the fastest build, but it can be pretty fast sometimes since you can just collect a ton of monsters and mow them down. You can also get +Quantity/Rarity on all your equipment since you don't need +Damage stuff. I enjoy the build since it allows me to just charge into everything.

When playing with a few people, my chaos damage does not seem like it does as much damage, but I'm usually playing with some elemental ranger that has crazy dps, or something like that. So I just try to stay out front and cloud everything so it starts dying before he gets up to it to mow it down, while staying behind me.


I'm sure there is stuff I forgot to mention so if there are any questions I'll answer them.

would you say it's as viable without the +3/+2 to lvl bonus?

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Witowt wrote:

would you say it's as viable without the +3/+2 to lvl bonus?

I think those pieces of equipment are pretty essential. You could do with a +2 bow though if you can't get a +3 right away.

I'm level 79 and my Poison Arrow is level 19 which does 587 damage per second, but with the +3 it is level 22, and does just under 900 a second, so it's a pretty significant difference at that level.

Those pieces of equipment shouldn't be too hard to find on the forums.

Edit: My PA is nearing level 20 so I'm excited to see if it get close to 1000 dmg per second.

Why do you have GMP and pierce on poison arrow? Pierce just doesn't make sense to me at all. GMP only increases the cloud by a small amount but decreases the damage SO much. I wouldn't use either. I'd put increase aoe, conc effect, and increased duration on poison arrow.

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haplessG00N wrote:

Why do you have GMP and pierce on poison arrow? Pierce just doesn't make sense to me at all. GMP only increases the cloud by a small amount but decreases the damage SO much. I wouldn't use either. I'd put increase aoe, conc effect, and increased duration on poison arrow.

Well GMP doesn't affect the clouds damage, and my physical damage is next to nothing. It just spreads out more clouds. I don't think anything in the game increases the clouds damage, besides getting +gem levels on items. The Le Heup of All ring possibly might, but I'm not sure of that.

I use Pierce because every time it pierces it leaves a cloud behind. If you watch the video you can see that happening.

So with GMP + Pierce it's fairly easy to cover the entire screen with poison in 1-2 shots.

Edit: Although, since GMP shoots so many and some end up going past the monsters anyway, it might be more efficient to use Increased Area of Effect with it, instead of Pierce... with a 4 Link.

Pierce is only 110% mana and Inc AoE is 150%, so I'll just stick with Pierce.

Thought more people might think my build was interesting. :D

It is an interesting build. I saw another video of a guy running something similar in HC.

Awesome AOE coverage, but the tanking utility seems limited, despite 25k armor, by the fact that you can't leech from any of your skills. I'm not that sold on dominating blow or viper srike in the build either.

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realatomicpanda wrote:

It is an interesting build. I saw another video of a guy running something similar in HC.

Awesome AOE coverage, but the tanking utility seems limited, despite 25k armor, by the fact that you can't leech from any of your skills. I'm not that sold on dominating blow or viper srike in the build either.

All of that is true. The highest maps I have done are level 72, which I tanked fine. Not having life leech will probably be more of a problem with higher stuff.

Although, like you said... dominating blow isn't necessary. If I found a Kaom's chest, I would just drop my 4 link dominating blow which I use on my chest right now anyway. That would increase my HP and HP regen by quite a bit.

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PhreEkGarden wrote:

Although, like you said... dominating blow isn't necessary. If I found a Kaom's chest, I would just drop my 4 link dominating blow which I use on my chest right now anyway. That would increase my HP and HP regen by quite a bit.

Actually, I saw Kripp playing around with dominating blow + melee splash + multistrike or something like that, and he had an army of like 30 flicker strike mobs on his side. Might be pretty fun to get something like that working in maps and definitely make dominating blow a lot more awesome than it would be otherwise.

As I said in the Viper Strike feedback thread I've also been running a build like this. I really love how unique it is. With my iteration the optimal choice is to use a +1 to Gems +2 to Melee Gems two-handed sword mainly because the availability of six linked sockets, double what's possible with sword and board.

The reason that's significant in the case of Viper Strike is the damage stat refactor coming. I believe it's been implied (maybe announced) that degeneration will be changed so that it is affected by damage modifiers. If so, a two-handed sword will allow you to have Viper Strike + Faster Attacks + Culling Strike (~20% Increased Damage at high gem levels) + Added Chaos Damage (20% quality for 10% Increased Chaos Damage) + Increased Duration + Blood Magic. No Multistrike because it'd reduce the damage significantly.