[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

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sklipnoty wrote:

So is it still viable to do this build on the new league or better do something else?

It's a little bit more frustrating to level but because +3 bows are significantly cheaper this league, it's also easier to scale it to a point where it's, for all intents and purposes, just as potent.

It's a little slower on boss kills without a Wither totem but otherwise it's fine.

Hi guys, can I get some suggestions on what to prioritize, or what doesn't work as initially thought?

I have a 5l bow with +2 and everything as listed. I use frenzy gmp with curse on hit to spread vulnerability around, vaal Lightning trap sometimes and flame golem, along with the auras.

now, what I dont have is blood rage, wither and essence drain. What do you guys suggest on taking next and linking it with?

p.s. why not level frenzy? the mana cost appears to be the same.

Hey guys, I was wondering what stats improve the chaos damage aside from the increase chaos damage stat.

Does projectile speed, physical damage etc help increase the Cloud damage or are they not needed.

Could use some pointers on stat priority.

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Infiltrator wrote:

Hi guys, can I get some suggestions on what to prioritize, or what doesn't work as initially thought?

I have a 5l bow with +2 and everything as listed. I use frenzy gmp with curse on hit to spread vulnerability around, vaal Lightning trap sometimes and flame golem, along with the auras.

now, what I dont have is blood rage, wither and essence drain. What do you guys suggest on taking next and linking it with?

p.s. why not level frenzy? the mana cost appears to be the same.

Wouldn't really bother linking much of anything until you're more certain your gear is going to last you a while. Waste of currency to be constantly socketing, chroming, and linking stuff.

I personally prioritize blood rage first, because I'm lazy with frenzy charges if I can afford to be. Then wither.

Links are in the OP.

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Hey guys, I was wondering what stats improve the chaos damage aside from the increase chaos damage stat.

Answered in the FAQ, second question.

Did some cleanup work in the OP. Should be easier to follow now.

Not much left to update at this point for 2.1.

* I want to hit ~level 90 before I start screwing around with the tree more to decide whether we can drop Mana Flows / Primal Spirit. Until then, I've decided Primal Spirit is the way to go (presuming we need to keep it). We don't need anywhere near as much mana regeneration in 2.1, which means the extra 20% from Mana Flows is unnecessary. Might as well improve our flask charges instead.
* I'm finding even in 40% reduced recovery maps though, that extra little bit of regen from Primal Spirit is nice. More extensive testing required.
* Gems are basically finalized, although I haven't edited the OP just yet to reflect that. I want to make ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN about the mana concerns first re: Clarity. I did enough testing on Standard to know Essence Drain isn't required, so we're sticking with the Wither Totem. So that's something.
* Lastly, the leveling section will need reworking.

I used to play a PA build before this new patch and after a quick update about the changes on the tree and new gems I came here to see the work you did with the tree and I have a question: Why did you take more DoT nodes than chaos damage nodes?

I'm not an expert on PA builds and my question is meant to gather info about this matter in order to improve my knowledge.

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dHsn wrote:

I used to play a PA build before this new patch and after a quick update about the changes on the tree and new gems I came here to see the work you did with the tree and I have a question: Why did you take more DoT nodes than chaos damage nodes?

I'm not an expert on PA builds and my question is meant to gather info about this matter in order to improve my knowledge.

CA is one of the simpler examples about how increased damage modifiers work. It gets more complex than this for other skills, and I'll provide a short example of that as well.

For CA, we know that Damage Over Time, Chaos Damage, Area Damage and Projectile Damage all increase the cloud damage. If you didn't well, now you do.

So what happens with increased damage modifiers is that they all add together before applying to the relevant portion of damage. Like I said, with CA, it's simple. There's only one damage type that's being modified.

The (simple) formula for damage modification is this:

Final DPS = [(Base Damage) * (100% + Increased Damage Modifiers)] * (100% + Multiplicative Damage Modifiers)

In the above formula, the 100% is basically there to just say "we're not looking to get 10% of our damage, we're looking to get 100% of our damage PLUS the increased damage."

Another way of expressing that is 1 + (Increased Damage Modifiers / 100).


For the purposes of this example, I'll keep it extremely simple.

Let's say we have:

* Base Damage of 200
* 10% increased DoT
* 20% increased Proj damage
* 30% increased Chaos damage

So we plug it in and it looks like this

FDPS = 200 * (100% + 10 + 20 + 30) * (100% [since we're not adding any multiplicative damage])
FDPS = 200 * (1 + [10+20+30/100]) * 1
FDPS = 200 * 1.6 * 1
FDPS = 320

Now let's change the values on those increased modifiers to:

* 20% increased DoT
* 10% increased Chaos damage
* 30% increased Proj damage.

FDPS = 200 * (100% + 20 + 10 + 30) * (100%)
FDPS - 200 * (1 + [20 + 10 + 30]/100) * 1
FDPS = 200 * 1.6 * 1
FDPS = 320

Notice how the final damage doesn't change.

So for CA, it's completely irrelevant which damage type you have more of because they all scale the damage equally, and because of the way the calculation is done (all increased modifiers adding together with each other before applying to the damage).


Let's take a look at a more complicated example: Fireball with flat added lightning damage.

* Fireball Base Damage = 200
* Flat added lightning = 50
* Increased spell damage = 10%
* Increased fire damage = 20%
* Increased elemental damage = 20%

So the problem here is that the increased fire damage will scale the fireball damage, but NOT the added lightning damage. Meanwhile, because we're dealing pure elemental damage (and not using say, added chaos), both the spell damage and generic elemental damage will apply to both the fireball and the flat added lightning. But again, fire will not touch the added lightning.

I'll break it down into two separate calculations here to make it more readily apparent

Fireball DPS = 200 * (1 + [10 + 20 + 20]/100)
= 200 * 1.5
= 300

Flat Lightning = 50 * (1 + [10 + 20]/100)
= 50 * 1.3
= 65

Net DPS = 365

But what if we have flat added fire instead?

Flat Fire = 50 * (1 + [10 + 20 + 20]/100)
= 50 * 1.5
= 75

Net DPS = 300 + 75 = 375.


Or what about 50 flat added chaos?

Flat Chaos = 50 * (1 + [10]/100)
= 50 * 1.1
= 55


Notice how in the flat lightning damage, the fire did not apply, and for the flat chaos damage, only the spell damage applied.


So it's very important to consider your damage sources when you are trying to scale your skills, and sometimes it is more complicated to understand.

A prime example of this consideration at work is Glacial Cascade: physical damage increases will only scale the physical portion of the skill; cold will only scale cold. So every GC build you see takes "spell damage," because it scales both the physical and cold.


And with CA, you would look at the skill and think it's fairly obvious DoT, Chaos and Area damage scale the cloud but a lot of people trip up and think projectile damage will not. But you have to remember, the projectile is in fact what deals the damage, because it explodes with the ground and then leaves the chaos cloud behind.


Sorry for the essay but I hope this makes it clear.

TL;DR increased damage modifiers add together before applying to the damage so no particular damage type takes priority for CA.

Thanks a lot for the update Serleth. Btw since you are updating leveling section, thought I would put my way so far. I was lucky to get a silverbranch drop on my mf toon. I 4linked it and used CA, RD, VM, Conc. effect. I barely get touched in normal except in malachai but no deaths [ Was done with 1100 hp and grace.] In cruel i am using the same setup except flame totem culling and so far its easy as well with 1.6k hp. Still using grace only. Mana isnt really a problem except in boss fights as long as you have 5-10 mana per kill gear.

Now going to see how I fare against malachai in cruel. Btw I used solo play with CA and flame totem.

Would you still take the initial ranger nodes if a scion was chosen for your build?

from 80 to 86 i earned ~2.5 exa, mostly just plain drops of chaos and bulk alt sale. 295 irr, 20iiq
gj ggg :D
mf still helps with reciepes, bought some nice rares and drillneck, still waiting for shiny drop to fund 6l :D

also found out DOT animation bug still works. almost got teared apart by temple piety(double temple piety with bossmods, not going easy way), cause there were no skill animation by them. like at all. my contagion friends having same issues

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Serleth wrote:

* Lastly, the leveling section will need reworking.

basically it have to be reduced to two words
nights hold