Damage Advice Caustic Arrow & Poison Gem + Contagion

Hi,

I would like to know, what stacks and what not.

My preferred build: ranged chaos/poison Shadow (high chaos/poison dmg, increased duration, projectile damage)

I want to use Caustic Arrow linked with Poison Support Gem and Added Chaos Damage, Rapid Decay and also Void Manipulation.
Additionally i want to use Contagion with Cwdt, Totem or self cast with Decay, too.

Facts?
0. DoT of Caustic Arrow, Contagion and Poison Support Gem are completely different "types"
1. caustic cloud will not stack with itself and will be overwritten by itself
2. Contagion won't stack with itself
3. as poison can stack, enemies could have DoT from Caustic Arrow, Contagion and several stacks from Poison Support Gem
4. Added Chaos Damage will only help the DoT of Poison Support Gem but not DoT of Caustic Arrow (but the initial hit) - is this also true for Void Manipulation?
5. Rapid Decay will help both Caustic Arrow & Poison Support Gem

What can I do to improve Damage with (other) gems in order of effectivity?
active -> GMP, PPAD?, ...
passive -> temp. chain, vulnerability, ...

3... has nothing to do with "poison stacking".

4) Wrong. The DoT of CA isn't poison, but it is chaos damage.

few points

1. Contagion is not a Poison. It does Chaos Damage, but it is not a Poison, and will overwrite itself when recast, not stack.

2. Caustic Arrow is not a Poison. It does not stack, and multiple clouds will not add multiple effects. The name was specifically changed to Caustic Arrow from Poison arrow to Highlight it does not poison, but instead just creates Chaos damage fields.

3. As Caustic Arrow does no damage on the initial hit, it will not gain any benefit with the Poison Support linked.

There are much more effective set ups than the one you have proposed.

Poison Support Gem
First of all, the poison damage caused by the poison support gem is based on the damage of the initial hit of the caustic arrow. Most caustic arrow builds are built on cloud dps, and neglect initial hit dps completely. This means that your poison that you will be adding will do very little damage. You are basically wasting a gem slot that could be used to buff the cloud damage.


Added Chaos Damage Support Gem
While this adds a flat damage boost to the initial hit, I'm not sure that it affects the cloud. Even if it does affect the cloud, cloud dps is based mostly on stacking as many "more" multipliers as possible. More multipliers are a better focus, rather than flat damage boosts.


Improving Damage
If you wanted to improve the dps significantly of your caustic arrow, the following supports can be used (in order of effectiveness):
1 - Empower (as long as it is level 2 or higher)
2 - Concentrated Effect
3 - Void manipulation
4 - Rapid Decay
5 - Slower Projectiles



Increasing the damage done by the cloud can also be accomplished by (in no particular order):
1 - +gem level bow, (preferably +3)
2 - using wither to increased chaos damage taken by enemy (on a totem with faster casting is very helpful)
3 - using Vulnerability curse
4 - Maintaining frenzy charges.
5 - Run a flame golem


The above set up will more than likely give you a caustic arrow cloud that does far more DPS on it's own than your 3 combined skills currently do (cloud + poison + contagion).

"

Rafein wrote:

3. As Caustic Arrow does no damage on the initial hit, it will not gain any benefit with the Poison Support linked.

Well, actually it does do some initial hit damage, it is just a very small amount.

You will notice if you spam your CA on a boss with energy shield, the cloud will melt away at their health while your initial hits chip minuscule amounts off of their energy shield.

"

Nick42 wrote:

"

Rafein wrote:

3. As Caustic Arrow does no damage on the initial hit, it will not gain any benefit with the Poison Support linked.

Well, actually it does do some initial hit damage, it is just a very small amount.

You will notice if you spam your CA on a boss with energy shield, the cloud will melt away at their health while your initial hits chip minuscule amounts off of their energy shield.

Caustic Arrow actually has a high base damage. It deals 100% attack damage and adds 30% of it as chaos, but since it is single target it isn't that useful.

The most important supports are Void Manipulation, Rapid Decay and Slower Projectiles. Concentraded Effect is strong but limits the range, which is no issue as soon as you exhaust your mana and just fill the screen with clouds. But those 3 are avaible quite early and provide a nice damage boost.

Vulnerability is also very important. Though it stacks additively with Wither and Withers rather low increase in chaos damage taken is unimpressive compared to the rather high increase Vulnerability offers, so Wither is more for the slow to keep them in clouds.

"

Emphasy wrote:

Caustic Arrow actually has a high base damage. It deals 100% attack damage and adds 30% of it as chaos, but since it is single target it isn't that useful.

Yes, that's true. However, while the potential is there for a decent first hit, unless you build for it and grab yourself a high DPS bow (thereby sacrificing your +gems prefixes) you aren't going to see much damage from it. I was just trying to portray that there are more efficient ways to use caustic arrow and buff its damage.

"

Emphasy wrote:

The most important supports are Void Manipulation, Rapid Decay and Slower Projectiles. Concentraded Effect is strong but limits the range, which is no issue as soon as you exhaust your mana and just fill the screen with clouds. But those 3 are avaible quite early and provide a nice damage boost.

I've had no issues with mana, but that's due to the fact that I have no int on my gear, so I was forced to spec into some mana/regen/mana on kill nodes just to grab the associated int. I will probably drop these when I upgrade my gear.

As for the range, I usually just keep an increased area of effect in my weapon swap. For large outdoor areas or low level farming I swap to inc AOE. For cramped hallways or boss fights, I swap to conc AOE.

"

Emphasy wrote:

Vulnerability is also very important. Though it stacks additively with Wither and Withers rather low increase in chaos damage taken is unimpressive compared to the rather high increase Vulnerability offers, so Wither is more for the slow to keep them in clouds.

Vulnerability is indeed a big boost for one cast, but wither is able to stack, hence why I suggested putting it on a totem with faster casting. It's still annoying to use on trash, but on a boss fight just plop your totem in the corner of the room and let it do its thing. The boss will accumulate stacks quickly, and you will kill them noticeably faster than without Wither.

"

Shagsbeard wrote:

3... has nothing to do with "poison stacking".

4) Wrong. The DoT of CA isn't poison, but it is chaos damage.

3. it has (last part of the sentence)

4. never said DoT of CA is poison, reread my list carefully

"

Rafein wrote:

few points

1. Contagion is not a Poison. It does Chaos Damage, but it is not a Poison, and will overwrite itself when recast, not stack.

2. Caustic Arrow is not a Poison. It does not stack, and multiple clouds will not add multiple effects. The name was specifically changed to Caustic Arrow from Poison arrow to Highlight it does not poison, but instead just creates Chaos damage fields.

3. As Caustic Arrow does no damage on the initial hit, it will not gain any benefit with the Poison Support linked.

1. never said that, too. already stated that it will overwrite itself

2. same as 1.

3. wrong

"

Nick42 wrote:

There are much more effective set ups than the one you have proposed.

Thanks for your extensively help.

My thought was to use some synergy effects with a chaos dmg./duration/poison build. CA only seems like a boring build for me as it isnt new ;)

"

AmUnRA256 wrote:

"

Nick42 wrote:

There are much more effective set ups than the one you have proposed.

Thanks for your extensively help.

My thought was to use some synergy effects with a chaos dmg./duration/poison build. CA only seems like a boring build for me as it isnt new ;)

No problem, glad to help.
Although CA is not the most interesting build, unfortunately POE doesn't really reward players for diversifying their skills.

Its probably possible to come up with something new and fun that can clear efficiently, especially when your mix of skills all benefit from the same passives - as your selections do, for the most part.

There is a reason CA keeps sticking around, and that's because its easy to play, cheap to gear, and does high damage.

I think there is still merit to your idea. It probably won't be as powerful as devoted-CA, but it would probably be more fun.


Disclaimer: I'm just guessing here, so this may or may not be viable:
If I was trying to build this, I would probably drop the poison, as it would cause you to have to focus on passives, skills, and supports that don't help the other skills, or find another way to apply the poison - 3rd skill, minion, totem, passive, gear, etc. That way you can still get your third DOT (I know you just want to stack all the DoTs for your build) without compromising your CA cloud damage.
Maybe grab Dirty Techniques from the tree and use a puncture set up or a Tora bow (wouldn't be able to roll +2 bow gems then)


Best of luck! I hope you find something fun and effective. Let me know if you have any more questions and I'll do my best to help!