[3.0] Poison/Bleed Tornado Shot Assassin (budget friendly)

Introduction:

In 3.0, GGG have completely overhauled the way ailments work. Bleed and poison are no longer affected by increases and multipliers that affect the hit that triggered them. Instead, they are calculated based on the hit's base damage, and then have their own increases and multipliers. GGG also buffed all poison and bleed damage and added a ton of nodes on the passive tree. One of the consequences of the new calculation is actually a positive - we don't care about anything that gives us less damage on the hit itself, such as Greater Multiple Projectiles or Deadly Ailments. The idea of the build is to take advantage of Assassin's Noxious Strike and Toxic Delivery nodes, in order to get 100% chance to bleed and 100% chance to poison on every hit, cover the entire screen with arrows thanks to Tornado Shot, and apply multiple stacks of both poison and bleed to every enemy on the screen.

Now with video!

For people who want to get into technicalities and adapt the build to their tastes, here's the pastebin for Path of Building. Note that the PoB DPS is not accurate since it does not take into account the fact that we apply multiple stacks of poison and bleed with every Tornado Shot. In reality, you have to multiply it by 5~7 in order to get a more accurate number.


Hope you guys enjoy it!


Video:

Video of me clearing a T15 Shaped Terrace. Note that the map had Elemental Weakness rolled so I disabled Grace in favour Purity of Elements. I took a few more hits than per usual.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdNgMg35C-8


Pros:

1. Excellent clear speed
2. Can do any map (some mods are just annoying but nothing is impossible)
3. Immune to elemental reflect and can run physical reflect
4. Cheap uniques
5. Easy to play, right click and run
6. If you use Haemophilia, you're going to love the sweet chain reactions
7. Good single target damage with your main skill


Cons:

1. A bit squishy if you go for all the recommended uniques, should end up at around 5500 life with good gear, 5000 life with budget gear
2. No life leech means you have to use life flasks a lot
3. Like every evasion/dodge build, it requires decent positioning


Affixes:

First I'm going to list every type of affix (increased or more), on our tree or gear, that improves our DPS. Ideally we are looking for things that scale both our bleed and our poison. Some things only scale our bleed or our poison, which is still good, but I'm going to list them in separate categories.





Our top priorities for the build to work are:

1. Greater Multiple Projectiles, this allows us to apply multiple stacks of ailments on every shot
2. Piercing, this allows subprojectiles from every main projectile to apply their stack to a maximum of enemies at once
3. 100% chance to inflict poison and 100% chance to inflict bleeding, this can only be achieved by using all of the uniques listed in the following paragraph, or by using very specific jewels; you can live with 80-85% but it's not optimal, and should only be done if you want better survivability as a trade-off


Other priorities:

4. Capped elemental resistances (obviously)
5. Life on every piece of rare gear to compensate for the uniques
6. Flat physical damage added to attacks on rings, amulet and quiver


Uniques:

The threshold I have set for this build is that none of the uniques should cost more than 10c. Of course if you have more currency you can start investing in a 5L or 6L, good jewels and good rare gear. I'm going to try to explain as best I can the role of each unique in the build so you can understand what they contribute and whether you want to replace them with something else.


Reach of the Council has 300 pDPS and the two additional arrows act as a 40% more damage multiplier. As such, it can only be bested by a rare bow with over 420 pDPS. The only one I could find on poe.trade while writing this was being sold for 50ex. So yeah, we're going to stick to RotC. It goes for less than 10c in Harbinger. Can be replaced by Infractem which has similar pDPS and integrated piercing but at the expense of a pseudo-40% more muliplier.


Voidwalker is essential because it allows us to hit one of our top 3 priorities - piercing. It also provides us with a nice 30% movespeed, almost permanent phasing and a 20% chance to avoid projectiles. Should be paired with a Quartz flask to ensure you always have the phasing active. Can be replaced with Garukhan's Flight or rare boots, but only if you either use Infractem or invest 6 points in the Piercing Shots cluster. Do not use a Pierce gem as it is a waste of a potential more multiplier.


The silent hero of this build. It mainly does two things. First it allows us to hit the 100% chance to inflict bleeding, as you can otherwise only get 85% from the tree without resorting to jewels. Second, it makes every enemy explode for 5% of their maximum life and triggers super cool chain reactions. Cherry on the cake, it has a 25% increased damage over time affix. Can be replaced by The Embalmer for a pseudo-5L or rare gloves. If you do this, you will be at 85% chance to inflict bleeding, which can be made up for by a few jewels with the "of Bleeding" suffix.


This is a cheap and convenient body armour. It gives us 40% chance to inflict poison by linking a level 10 Lesser Poison gem to our setup, 100% increased poison damage and 25% increased poison duration if we respect the thresholds, and it even has decent resists. The main downsides are a lack of life and a relatively low evasion rating. A good rare chest can reach 120 life and 2k evasion. If you would rather have the survivability from the latter, then you need to grab the 2 additional Chance to Poison nodes in the Fatal Toxins cluster, and a few jewels with the "of Venom" suffix.

Alternate uniques worth considering (some of them are expensive):
- Yriel's Fostering (Beastial Ursa) has some pretty interesting affixes which are all excellent for us, but lacks resists; the 20% additional chance to bleed means we could either replace Haemophilia (not recommended since the explosion is awesome) or not bother with the Heavy Draw cluster and get 4 skill points to allocate elsewhere, 2 of which should be used to get 20% chance to poison back from the Fatal Toxins cluster
- Atziri's Splendour (Evasion) instead of a rare chest if you don't want to run either Dendrobate or Yriel's Fostering because of survivability issues
- Cospri's Will could make for a fun double curse setup (Temporal Chains and Vulnerability come to mind) and even has chance to poison on hit, but it offers neither elemental resistances nor life
- The Perfect Form frees up 4 nodes by giving Phase Acrobatics, allows you to run Arctic Armour for cheap, and has a very welcome Dexterity increase, unfortunately it has negative resistance which could be really hard to make up for unless you get some really good jewellery
- The Rat Cage is very similar to The Perfect Form in that it offers some interesting affixes, most notably the +200 life and +15% movement speed, but at the expense of negative resistance
- Hinekora's Sight is an interesting unique which has dodge and spell dodge on top of an absurd amount of accuracy, which can really help, but unfortunately it comes with neither life nor resistances
- Rat's Nest if you really want to go maximum glass cannon

Links:

The main Tornado Shot setup, in this order of priority:

Tornado Shot - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Deadly Ailments - Unbound Ailments - Physical Projectile Attack Damage - Swift Affliction

Swap Swift Affliction for Vile Toxins before boss fights for optimal DPS.

Utility setups, up to your preference, none of this is mandatory:

Grace - Arctic Armour - Purity of Elements - Enlighten (toggle auras according to maps)

Blink Arrow - Faster Attacks

Summon Ice Golem - Minion Life

Cast When Damage Taken (3) - Immortal Call (5) - Increased Duration - Vaal Grace or Temporal Chains (7)

Tornado Shot - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Curse on Hit - Vulnerability or Temporal Chains - Maim - Faster Attacks


Passive tree:

I'm not going to do a detailed tree progression. The order is up to you according to your priorities. But generally, I would say start by aiming for Acrobatics, then Crimson Dance, then any nodes that give a chance to inflict poison or bleeding. The latter are located in the Dirty Techniques, Fatal Toxins, Toxic Strikes, Heavy Draw and Master Fletcher clusters. Grab a few life nodes along the way. Then you should start allocating the rest of the life nodes so that you have at least 3-4k health before entering maps. Finally, you can start allocating the rest of the nodes that mainly give damage increases.



Ascendencies:

Noxious Strike > Toxic Delivery > Unstable Infusion > Deadly Infusion


Bandits:

Kill them all! We are starved for passive points and none of the bandits gives us a meaningful improvement anyway.


Flasks:

Since we cannot leech life from damage over time, we have to use two life flasks, ideally one Eternal with increased evasion rating and one instant Divine with bleed or freeze removal. Then ideally, we use a Quartz, a Stibnite and a Jade flask.

Good unique flasks, sorted by ascending price:
- Atziri's Promise offers a nice 20% more multiplier on your poison damage
- Witchfire Brew, which is a Stibnite flask that also curses enemies around you with level 21 Vulnerability and increases damage over time; it's a huge damage boost if you're not already running a Curse on Hit setup, but it requires to get close to the action which can be deadly in higher level maps
- Sin's Rebirth, which is another Stibnite flask that gives unholy might (30% more poison damage)
- Dying Sun is basically a 28% more multiplier if you're using Reach of the Council, and a 40% more multiplier otherwise


Mana management:

In order to sustain the 35 mana per shot (on a 6-link) with a relatively small mana pool and two auras, especially against bosses, the build requires somewhere between 1% and 2% mana leech. Some mana gained on hit can also make it more comfortable. I recommend either using the Essence Sap cluster or the Spirit Void cluster for this. You can refund them if you get enough mana leech on your rings and quiver. Mana gained on hit and mana leech are also jewel mods so watch out for those.


Current gear:



Levelling guide:

Use Split Arrow with Pierce, Chance to Bleed and Lesser Poison till level 18. Silverbranch is a good unique bow to start with.
At level 18, buy a Roth's Reach and swap Pierce for Physical Projectile Attack Damage.
At level 32, buy a Death's Harp and swap Split Arrow for Tornado Shot and Physical Projectile Attack Damage for Lesser Multiple Projectiles.
At level 36, I recommend getting a Penetrating Arrow Quiver for the piercing.
At level 38, swap Lesser Multiple Projectiles for Greater Multiple Projectiles.
At level 43, buy a Haemophilia.
At level 53, buy an Infractem and swap Chance to Bleed and Lesser Poison for Unbound Ailments and Deadly Ailments. I also recommend swapping your Penetrating Arrow Quiver for a Broadhead Arrow Quiver.
At level 59, buy a Dendrobate, and transfer your Tornado Shot setup onto it.
At level 69, buy a Reach of the Council and a Voidwalker.


EDIT #1: formatting
EDIT #2: updated "Current Gear" section and added Temporal Chains to utilities
EDIT #3: updated tree to grab the Essence Sap cluster for better mana management, updated PoB accordingly, and added possible uniques to build around if you have some currency
EDIT #4: added Arctic Armour to possible auras, updated tree and PoB to take Druidic Rite, and added end-game flasks to PoB for DPS calculation purposes
EDIT #5: updated "Current Gear" section
EDIT #6: added a "Mana Management" section, removed Vitality and Summon Stone Golem in favour of Arctic Armour and Summon Ice Golem, optimized the tree and updated PoB accordingly, updated "Current Gear" section
EDIT #7: added video

Made some adjustments, listed in the edits!

What have u done with the build until now?

It is really worth crimson dance? it should give us less dps :( still dont know how it really works

Seems interesting, would love to see some videos!

"

claydbp wrote:

What have u done with the build until now?

I only started the build about 5 days ago, after planning it for some time. I started from basically nothing, about 20 leftover chaos.
For the moment I'm farming T13 and T14 maps with ease with a 5L chest. Haven't tried T15 or guardians yet but I'm sure that apart from the bosses it will be a breeze.
The MVP truly is Haemophilia, basically a pack of mobs dies as fast as the weaker mob in the pack, or the one that receives the most subprojectiles (there is a bit of randomness with Tornado Shot).
Atziri shouldn't be much of a problem assuming correct positioning. I just didn't get any reason to try it. Not sure about Uber Atziri.

"

rolik552 wrote:

Seems interesting, would love to see some videos!

Just need to get recording software! :P
Might do it next weekend if I find the time.
This is my first guide by the way.

"

arthur1744 wrote:

It is really worth crimson dance? it should give us less dps :( still dont know how it really works

Most definitely! The calculation is quite simple. It halves bleed's damage but allows it to stack up to 8 times, which means it's actually a x4 mutliplier once you apply all the stacks! With Tornado Shot GMP and Reach of the Council, you can expect to apply anywhere from 4 to 7 stacks per shot. Most likely 6 or 7.

Video please :)

How much HP do you have, in this build?

Uber Lab down on first try! Izaro melted faster than a T12 boss.

"

ksardoom wrote:

How much HP do you have, in this build?

Currently not much, about 4500. According to PoB with perfect gear it can go slightly above 6000. More realistically with good gear it's going to be around 5500.
It's not as meaningful as on a melee build however. Especially here we can kill stuff from offscreen. We just need enough to net get one-shot by regular mob attacks in case on of them slips through the meat grinder.

I wearad my 2.6 archer gear, and had 4500 hp(in 2.6 with this gear, i had 6k+ hp). With 5000-5500 hp and no armour, will very hard to kill shaper/uber atziri/uber izaro/guardians, will get many oneshots. Very thin build.