[3.16][HC][ON BREAK] Caustic Arrow Raider, DoT Focused | Tanky | 6k+ Health | All Content | In-depth

Thanks for the build, i tried it as nearly Beginner, it was my 3. Ranger build i tried and its the Best with only some lag and missplay deaths. I decided to play with the caustic at the early game. Some boss fights was long but the high hp pool helped easy not to die and gave good time to learn to doge some attacks and learn the boss fight mechanics.

I switched the totem in the boss fight at the begin to the decoy, it was not that bad. I got a 2. Bow with puncture, cast on hit and despair, it helps a lot on boss fights to reduce the res and set bleeding on it.


greetings and sorry for my bad english


one of the Chaos Ranger ;)

Today, the guide hit 100,000 views milestone. I'm happy that this guide attracted so many people, despite using unpopular and underrated skill. Lifting's video definitely helped a lot, but i still find it to be big achievement.

Since we hit the magical 100k views, i've finally forced myself to fight Shaper in BHC.

With some knowledge i got from previous run, it was much easier fight except ending of 2nd and 3rd phase. You're gonna see when i upload the video. Overall, Decoy Totem is still not enough to save Zana. Maybe combination of Enduring Cry + Totem will solve it... or slightly more damage.

I also killed T13 Eradicator that i've been afraid of for a long time now. Felt easy with lvl 23 Purity of Lightning and knowledge how his Tendril attack works.

I plan to kill T14 Elder soon as well. After that... Chayula and Uber Atziri i guess. Chayula should be somewhat fine with T2 chaos resist quiver i crafted and Ming's Heart. I also figured out very cool idea to boost defence against Uber Atziri, to safely tank mini-flameblasts and stormcalls. Cheese strat, but it should be amazing.

As for the Uber Elder, i intend to attempt him at lvl 97 or 98. I want to invest into Skill Effect duration first. Considering i don't play PoE much right now thanks to real life, it might take a long time.

Overall, i'll update video section tomorrow after i upload everything. I might take a look at gear section as well.

Apr 7th, 2018
Equipment:
* Improved whole section, by rewriting few in-depth explainations for the gear. It's mostly the same thing, but should be easier to read and understand.
* Added Queen of the Forest as optional armour for non-Raider ascendancies.
* Updated some gear pieces to my current ones. Not all of them tho.

Videos:
* Added 2nd shaper kill, all shaper and elder guardians to the section
* Replaced Vaal Temple with new one.
* Added playlist of all 3.1 videos recorded, including some videos i didn't share previously.

FAQ:
* Added 2 more questions that were asked recently.
* Deleted question about QotF, since it's included in optional body armours now.

So far, this build feels very nice.
Let’s see, I will try to explain my experience so far, please excuse my bad English.
I am using the onslaught path where with so much movement speed and 95% (with onslaught) evasion makes most content quite easy.

At lvl 91:

Uber lab: A lot of movement speed and evasion makes the lab easy and trivial. Had 0 problems with fully buffed uber izaro so far.

Elder Guardians at red Tier maps (T11-T12) were extremely easy. With the movement speed you can just dodge everything.

Elder T11: Died twice from my mistakes. Second serious attempt. Biggest problem - Even with decoy totem I feel is not possible to defend shaper. Need to kill spawns quite fast because degen is quite a problem indeed. Especially If you got frozen in place by Elder on top of degen patches.

Guardians - Chimera: With so much evasion, you can just stay still and attack. Every once in a while, when you get hit, you regen everything. The decoy totem is very useful for the minions phase.

Guardians - Minotaur: Did 8 mods map (vulnerability, extra lightning, nemesis, frenzy on hit, ignite). Got hit a couple of times and the hits were painful (90% of hp). Then after I somehow I died one-shoted, I started manually dodging - moving around and being outside the rock-fall areas. Overall I would say that it was easy.

Guardians - Phoenix: A lot of spells. I was running in circles and manually dodging the charged - aoe attack. (I got one shot the first time as I ignored it). While running in circles and attacking the whole arena so the small phoenixes can die as soon as the spawn. They do spells so they are dangerous. If you are careful is not hard at all.

Guardians - Hydra: Dodge the turret shots and you are fine. They do about the half life in damage, but you heal up almost immediately. I find is the only guardian where I had to pay attention. Other than that, is not hard. So much movement speed makes dodge easy.

Then I got lvl 92, bought 2x empower lvl 4, better boots (more hp + got lab enchant for spell dodge). All in all, got +300 hp (6329 hp with quiver / 6049hp with staff | + 90 ES)

Shaper: Shaper itself is not so hard. The portal phase feels again impossible to defend Zana. And every time after the portal phase he went on with the bullet hell phase. I died all times because of this. (I could tank 1 bullet with the hp.) Maybe letting zana die as fast as possible so she can heal up in time could be a silly solution?

Uber Atziri: Haven’t tried yet.

Most challenging continent while mapping was:
- I got difficulties was an 8-mod, two-unique bosses on crystal ore map. 6 bosses on such a small arena was quite a challenge. And they are quite resistant on our damage it seems.
- Did 8-mod, double beyond, Xoph breach in an elder influenced T15 shaped belfry. That was intense. After the breach there were 4 beyond bosses left. With a bit of kitting killed them all without problems. That was fun! It reminded me the legacy league.

Frenzy vs Onslaught path:
I find onslaught path better. The movement speed you get is crazy. With a 10% frenzy charge on kill quiver (4% was not enough) was enough to have almost always max frenzy charges on mapping. On bossing with frenzy skill is easy to charge up and within 14 seconds you will want to curse the boss again anyway (~10 sec the duration of despair).
The problem with onslaught is that I do not always have it against bosses. Sometimes it takes more attacks to charge up than I would like to. I will try silver flash (onslaught) in place of quicksilver flask for difficult bosses. With the movement speed you get with onslaught, makes the quicksilver flask extra (for bossing). Will see.


To summarise so far:

- Fail: Shaper portal phase -> ended up dead on the followed up bullet hell phase, Run failed.
- T12 Elder portal phase - shaper dead. (Killed elder but without being able to protect shaper).
- All other content is quite trivial.

I am trying to think any good synergise/way to boost damage for the portal phases.

My gear:


EDIT: Tried today Elder T11 and with lvl 92 and lvl 4 empowers was very easy.
Failed to protect shaper at the third restrain again. This time I tried ED+Contagion (with decoty totem). It went a bit better this time but eventually I failed. I think it has some potential. It was a bit confusing having to do CA -> weapon swap -> Contagion - ED and keep up golem and decoy totem which are dying quite frequently.

"

hyerf wrote:

Spoiler

So far, this build feels very nice.
Let’s see, I will try to explain my experience so far, please excuse my bad English.
I am using the onslaught path where with so much movement speed and 95% (with onslaught) evasion makes most content quite easy.

At lvl 91:

Uber lab: A lot of movement speed and evasion makes the lab easy and trivial. Had 0 problems with fully buffed uber izaro so far.

Elder Guardians at red Tier maps (T11-T12) were extremely easy. With the movement speed you can just dodge everything.

Elder T11: Died twice from my mistakes. Second serious attempt. Biggest problem - Even with decoy totem I feel is not possible to defend shaper. Need to kill spawns quite fast because degen is quite a problem indeed. Especially If you got frozen in place by Elder on top of degen patches.

Guardians - Chimera: With so much evasion, you can just stay still and attack. Every once in a while, when you get hit, you regen everything. The decoy totem is very useful for the minions phase.

Guardians - Minotaur: Did 8 mods map (vulnerability, extra lightning, nemesis, frenzy on hit, ignite). Got hit a couple of times and the hits were painful (90% of hp). Then after I somehow I died one-shoted, I started manually dodging - moving around and being outside the rock-fall areas. Overall I would say that it was easy.

Guardians - Phoenix: A lot of spells. I was running in circles and manually dodging the charged - aoe attack. (I got one shot the first time as I ignored it). While running in circles and attacking the whole arena so the small phoenixes can die as soon as the spawn. They do spells so they are dangerous. If you are careful is not hard at all.

Guardians - Hydra: Dodge the turret shots and you are fine. They do about the half life in damage, but you heal up almost immediately. I find is the only guardian where I had to pay attention. Other than that, is not hard. So much movement speed makes dodge easy.

Then I got lvl 92, bought 2x empower lvl 4, better boots (more hp + got lab enchant for spell dodge). All in all, got +300 hp (6329 hp with quiver / 6049hp with staff | + 90 ES)

Shaper: Shaper itself is not so hard. The portal phase feels again impossible to defend Zana. And every time after the portal phase he went on with the bullet hell phase. I died all times because of this. (I could tank 1 bullet with the hp.) Maybe letting zana die as fast as possible so she can heal up in time could be a silly solution?

Uber Atziri: Haven’t tried yet.

Most challenging continent while mapping was:
- I got difficulties was an 8-mod, two-unique bosses on crystal ore map. 6 bosses on such a small arena was quite a challenge. And they are quite resistant on our damage it seems.
- Did 8-mod, double beyond, Xoph breach in an elder influenced T15 shaped belfry. That was intense. After the breach there were 4 beyond bosses left. With a bit of kitting killed them all without problems. That was fun! It reminded me the legacy league.

Frenzy vs Onslaught path:
I find onslaught path better. The movement speed you get is crazy. With a 10% frenzy charge on kill quiver (4% was not enough) was enough to have almost always max frenzy charges on mapping. On bossing with frenzy skill is easy to charge up and within 14 seconds you will want to curse the boss again anyway (~10 sec the duration of despair).
The problem with onslaught is that I do not always have it against bosses. Sometimes it takes more attacks to charge up than I would like to. I will try silver flash (onslaught) in place of quicksilver flask for difficult bosses. With the movement speed you get with onslaught, makes the quicksilver flask extra (for bossing). Will see.


To summarise so far:

- Fail: Shaper portal phase -> ended up dead on the followed up bullet hell phase, Run failed.
- T12 Elder portal phase - shaper dead. (Killed elder but without being able to protect shaper).
- All other content is quite trivial.

I am trying to think any good synergise/way to boost damage for the portal phases.

My gear:

Spoiler

(For all the weapon gems which the corruption failed (20lvl/20%quality) I am leveling up new ones).

At lvl 91:

Spoiler

Empowers lvl 3 instead of 4:

EDIT: Tried today Elder T11 and with lvl 92 and lvl 4 empowers was very easy.
Failed to protect shaper at the third restrain again. This time I tried ED+Contagion (with decoty totem). It went a bit better this time but eventually I failed. I think it has some potential. It was a bit confusing having to do CA -> weapon swap -> Contagion - ED and keep up golem and decoy totem which are dying quite frequently.

Glad you're having fun with the build and tried the hardest content. Most of what you said is what i experienced as well, with some differences.

In the Elder fight, i didn't have too much troubles protecting shaper. I fought him twice, T8 with enduring cry (also my first ever attempt at him) and T6 with decoy totem. In both cases i managed to protect the shaper. Easiest way to protect him is frost wall, just barricade yourself with shaper and look how all of them die to the degen.

For Shaper fight, i had problems with portal phase as well (as you might've seen on recent video). Defending once is fine, twice is too much. I have potential solutions in mind:

#1 - Blasphemy temp chains - prolly best idea of them all
#2 - Witchfire Brew
#3 - Blight instead of ED
#4 - Frost Wall

Decoy totem should still be mandatory for that fight. As for letting Zana die... might be an option. I'm not experienced in that fight in general so don't know how it works exactly.

For shaper guardians, i find Phoenix the easiest. He can't do shit, it's all kiting. Only his AoE nuke can be scary (AoE maps... urgh...), plus clarity/mana flask is kinda necessary. Minotaur and Hydra is pretty much like you said. I find Chimera damn dangerous tho.

Crystal Ore bosses are pain in general because of the special bloodline mod. Plus, they're dangerous on their own.

One more thing, don't worry about stone golem. It's better to not have him active for boss fights, as they can sometimes focus him instead of you. Normally you just dodge the boss attacks, but if you dodge right where your aggro'd golem is... Might be deadly.

Your gear is damn good, especially the rings and the quiver. You've overcapped evade chance for sure.

"

DankawSL wrote:

Glad you're having fun with the build and tried the hardest content. Most of what you said is what i experienced as well, with some differences.

Thanks for the build :)

"

Your gear is damn good, especially the rings and the quiver. You've overcapped evade chance for sure.

I was quite lucky with the ring and the quiver. Got them around 20c each. Or 40c? I want to buy seconds and I cannot find!

"

One more thing, don't worry about stone golem. It's better to not have him active for boss fights, as they can sometimes focus him instead of you. Normally you just dodge the boss attacks, but if you dodge right where your aggro'd golem is... Might be deadly.

Interesting point for the golem. Well, golem usually is one shot so I do not bother resummon it anyway but I will keep that in mind. I tried to use the golem for the portal phases for some extra aggro. It was decent but probably waste of time the casting time. Maybe flame golem swap for boss fights?

"

For shaper guardians, i find Phoenix the easiest. He can't do shit, it's all kiting. Only his AoE nuke can be scary (AoE maps... urgh...), plus clarity/mana flask is kinda necessary. Minotaur and Hydra is pretty much like you said. I find Chimera damn dangerous tho.

For the Phoenix is not much that is difficult more that you have to kite as you said. In contrast with Chimera and Mino where I had to do very little. I guess Chimera was easy for me since I have 95% evasion. For Phoenix, If I recall correctly I got mana flask for this fight in place of the quicksilver flask, which I am not using much in boss fights anyway.

"

In the Elder fight, i didn't have too much troubles protecting shaper. I fought him twice, T8 with enduring cry (also my first ever attempt at him) and T6 with decoy totem. In both cases i managed to protect the shaper. Easiest way to protect him is frost wall, just barricade yourself with shaper and look how all of them die to the degen.

For Shaper fight, i had problems with portal phase as well (as you might've seen on recent video). Defending once is fine, twice is too much. I have potential solutions in mind:

#1 - Blasphemy temp chains - prolly best idea of them all
#2 - Witchfire Brew
#3 - Blight instead of ED
#4 - Frost Wall

Decoy totem should still be mandatory for that fight. As for letting Zana die... might be an option. I'm not experienced in that fight in general so don't know how it works exactly.

The Frost wall is a very good idea! I will try that next time.

I tried Blight (lvl 21/20%) in my first Red Tier Elder fight but in the Third restrain mobs are coming from numerous directions and the aoe of blight itself is quite small to be effective. It went worse than ED+Contagion.
Did not tried that in Shaper fight. Unfortunately the shaper is quite expensive to experiment with!
Frost wall might work here as well since you will have more time to do the damage? With blight probably as there is only one portal.
Frost wall for defensive barriers, blasphemy + temp chains in place of Curse on hit + despair, blight + CA for the damage.

I think I was also unlucky with my Shaper fight because every single time after the portal phase, I got the bullet hell phase (whereas in your video you got the beam phase in between). And Zana was 0.5 sec late for my dodge skills. So If she was to die 1 sec earlier, maybe I would have enough time to blink arrow inside her bubble. I did it once but unfortunately I was just in front of the bubble and died. Confusing graphics. But maybe it is too risky for hardcore anyway!

are there a chance to utilize pathfinder instead of raider? i am huge fan of flaskdrinkers
thats what i did (theory):
https://pastebin.com/3zCmcV1z
according to ur build:
cons:
- slightly less dmg
- less hp (450)
- no dodge
- 46% evade change vs yours 86(flask)
- more mana reserved (75)
- a bit more expensive
pros:
+ perma flasks (so perma curse immune
+ 90 allres
+ 70% phys damage taken as ele dmg (and even possible push it to 80% with ideal watcher's eye)
+ very huge Life recovery from flask
+ faster!


Aspect of the spider seems good to this build, any ideas?

On passive tree next to Growth and Decay there are two nodes that give 12% increased damage over time (each). It seems to me they'd improve both CA and ED damage, and they're already reached. Is there any reason those aren't grabbed?

"

hyerf wrote:

Spoiler

"

DankawSL wrote:

Glad you're having fun with the build and tried the hardest content. Most of what you said is what i experienced as well, with some differences.

Thanks for the build :)

"

Your gear is damn good, especially the rings and the quiver. You've overcapped evade chance for sure.

I was quite lucky with the ring and the quiver. Got them around 20c each. Or 40c? I want to buy seconds and I cannot find!

"

One more thing, don't worry about stone golem. It's better to not have him active for boss fights, as they can sometimes focus him instead of you. Normally you just dodge the boss attacks, but if you dodge right where your aggro'd golem is... Might be deadly.

Interesting point for the golem. Well, golem usually is one shot so I do not bother resummon it anyway but I will keep that in mind. I tried to use the golem for the portal phases for some extra aggro. It was decent but probably waste of time the casting time. Maybe flame golem swap for boss fights?

"

For shaper guardians, i find Phoenix the easiest. He can't do shit, it's all kiting. Only his AoE nuke can be scary (AoE maps... urgh...), plus clarity/mana flask is kinda necessary. Minotaur and Hydra is pretty much like you said. I find Chimera damn dangerous tho.

For the Phoenix is not much that is difficult more that you have to kite as you said. In contrast with Chimera and Mino where I had to do very little. I guess Chimera was easy for me since I have 95% evasion. For Phoenix, If I recall correctly I got mana flask for this fight in place of the quicksilver flask, which I am not using much in boss fights anyway.

"

In the Elder fight, i didn't have too much troubles protecting shaper. I fought him twice, T8 with enduring cry (also my first ever attempt at him) and T6 with decoy totem. In both cases i managed to protect the shaper. Easiest way to protect him is frost wall, just barricade yourself with shaper and look how all of them die to the degen.

For Shaper fight, i had problems with portal phase as well (as you might've seen on recent video). Defending once is fine, twice is too much. I have potential solutions in mind:

#1 - Blasphemy temp chains - prolly best idea of them all
#2 - Witchfire Brew
#3 - Blight instead of ED
#4 - Frost Wall

Decoy totem should still be mandatory for that fight. As for letting Zana die... might be an option. I'm not experienced in that fight in general so don't know how it works exactly.

The Frost wall is a very good idea! I will try that next time.

I tried Blight (lvl 21/20%) in my first Red Tier Elder fight but in the Third restrain mobs are coming from numerous directions and the aoe of blight itself is quite small to be effective. It went worse than ED+Contagion.
Did not tried that in Shaper fight. Unfortunately the shaper is quite expensive to experiment with!
Frost wall might work here as well since you will have more time to do the damage? With blight probably as there is only one portal.
Frost wall for defensive barriers, blasphemy + temp chains in place of Curse on hit + despair, blight + CA for the damage.

I think I was also unlucky with my Shaper fight because every single time after the portal phase, I got the bullet hell phase (whereas in your video you got the beam phase in between). And Zana was 0.5 sec late for my dodge skills. So If she was to die 1 sec earlier, maybe I would have enough time to blink arrow inside her bubble. I did it once but unfortunately I was just in front of the bubble and died. Confusing graphics. But maybe it is too risky for hardcore anyway!

IMO 30% increased damage from flame golem is not worth it. It's only ~4% more damage. Just stick to using golem for mapping purely. Which golem is your choice. Besides, the frost wall trick is all you need for the Elder (thanks reddit for the tip).

For any boss that you can easily facetank, Blight should be better. I do answer the question about it in FAQ. Shaper is one of few bosses i would try using it, especially with Skill Effect duration tree. ED is still superior in majority of cases thanks to the safety it gives.

I think temp chains blasphemy + decoy totem should be enough for portal phase. Decoy totem is doing work, but dies bit too fast and sometimes mobs get to zana before totem can taunt them. Temp chains should solve both of theses issues. I would use it instead of Grace and only for portal phase (deactivate asap when it ends). That way you still can curse Shaper with Despair.

"

Giordano wrote:

are there a chance to utilize pathfinder instead of raider? i am huge fan of flaskdrinkers

Aspect of the spider seems good to this build, any ideas?

any thoughts about Kaoms/loreweave?

You can use Pathfinder instead, but i really don't see any reason to. The only thing it has to offer, is the flask charges generation. That's it. Raider better in everything else, besides the build already has pretty much permanent flask uptime for mapping with exception of bosses.

I've been thinking about Aspect of the Spider. It's great for sure, especially with the chest. I want to use it, but i'm scared of low mana pool and harder mana management at this point. If you want to, i definitely suggest to try it out.

Kaom's Heart is included in optional body armours. Loreweave serves no purpose except -% max res maps.

"

gokens wrote:

On passive tree next to Growth and Decay there are two nodes that give 12% increased damage over time (each). It seems to me they'd improve both CA and ED damage, and they're already reached. Is there any reason those aren't grabbed?

Two most important reasons:

#1 - Jewels are better - most jewel slots need only 2 points, and on single one you can get same amount of damage and 2 additional mods on top of it.
#2 - Level 94 tree requirement - Most people don't reach such high level, and that's the level when you have all easy to get jewel slots.

If you want to, you can pick them up instead of 0.6% life regen. I definitely prefer the additional point and bonus regen over ~3-4% more damage.

"

DankawSL wrote:

"

Giordano wrote:

are there a chance to utilize pathfinder instead of raider? i am huge fan of flaskdrinkers

Aspect of the spider seems good to this build, any ideas?

any thoughts about Kaoms/loreweave?

You can use Pathfinder instead, but i really don't see any reason to. The only thing it has to offer, is the flask charges generation. That's it. Raider better in everything else, besides the build already has pretty much permanent flask uptime for mapping with exception of bosses.

I've been thinking about Aspect of the Spider. It's great for sure, especially with the chest. I want to use it, but i'm scared of low mana pool and harder mana management at this point. If you want to, i definitely suggest to try it out.

Kaom's Heart is included in optional body armours. Loreweave serves no purpose except -% max res maps.

i would follow ur build first and would try pathfinder around 90~ish
seems like pathfinder have more defensive options