[3.16][HC][ON BREAK] Caustic Arrow Raider, DoT Focused | Tanky | 6k+ Health | All Content | In-depth
"I think the flask recipes should be unlocked by default because they don't require any special beast only 4 random. Einhar starts his quest fairly early (act 2 I think) so you should have some beasts from his quests even from levelling, he sometimes pops randomly in any area after unlocking his first quest. "Malevolence is 50% mana, so you have another 50% to work with, flesh & stone is another 25%, you shouldn't really need more than 10-15% unreserved mana if you set your gear right or if you use a mana flask before that time (you can spam alterations on a mana flask until you get "enduring" prefix that ensures it will keep regening mana for the whole duration of 1 use and not cancel immediately when full available mana is reached). The golems die a lot on a build that doesn't focus on buffing them (and that's mostly Elementalists and minion builds), they aren't very reliable "distraction", you could use decoy totem for that purpose but it shouldn't be necessary. Also golem itself doesn't do much damage, if you're deciding which one to pick, pick the one that provides some buff to you that you'd like. And you should definitely fit despair somewhere into your build, it's one of the few things you can use to help your damage on bosses. Last edited by Viktranka on May 23, 2020, 9:12:49 PM
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Which mods would be mostly reccomended for Abyss Jewel to get the most out of Caustic Arrow?
Since mods mentioned in the gear section only works for regular jewels, any suggestions? :) | |
" Increased damage over time while wielding 2 handed weapon The rest are defensive mods and sadly the popular ones like chance for onslaught / phasing on kill are useless to a raider because the ascendancy already gives you that. P.S. The only case where you have to use abyss jewel over normal jewel is stygian vise belt, you can get corrupted blood immunity on that because getting it on a jewel with a lot of good mods is expensive, now getting one with small amount of good mods is significantly cheaper, and there aren't many good mods as you see. Example of fairly cheap corrupted blood immunity jewel I used earlier on: As you see, it doesn't offer much more, but it's good to have if you don't have other sources of bleed immunity (double mod watcher's eye for example). Stuff like Sirus or beyond mobs (I think it's beyond? one of the past league mods) can easily kill you with corrupted blood. Last edited by Viktranka on May 31, 2020, 3:12:25 PM
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Long time no see, again. I didn't check forums since i died on my "meme" RoA totem build. Had no reason to log in especially since questions are quickly answered by Viktranka. If you're curious, i died to Kosis in Simulacrum at last wave. He hit me and applied corrupted blood stack when i was out of staunching potions... I had no idea he can apply that DoT in the first place. When i noticed and tried to log out (first time this league, i think?), servers lagged out and took ~2-3 seconds to finally log me out. I was already dead by then. This is 100% on me, no doubt about it. Died at lvl 97 and 53% xp. No replay because this build combined with delirium lags too hard. But hey, the build worked extremely well.
About the new league - i VERY much look forward to it. I mentioned many ties in the past that Bestiary was one of my favorite leagues of all times. I also voiced my discontent about it's implementation to the core game, because all basic reforge recipes were completely removed and they had insane potential if used correctly without being broken. This league they're coming back stronger than before. Hell, if you look at Oshabi she has a skull mask similar to Einhar's. There's no way i'm not going to enjoy it. I assume you guys already know that Wind Dancer keystone is no longer legion jewel exclusive and will appear on passive tree. It's in a location where the build already paths through, which gives interesting opportunities... I used to be against it because it required few precious passive points to get, had a downside and better alternatives existed too. Opportunity cost being 1 point without disabling other great legion keystones, it might be worth taking it. Dread Banner with Generosity to cap evade chance with Wind Dancer allocated seems like a good idea. You can do a lot of thing with free chest piece, like capping spell dodge. Corpse explosion for extra safety. Life recovery on kill. Use another unique chest piece. In short, Kintsugi might not be mandatory anymore. What's left now is to wait for more teasers and patch notes. https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3053600 - My Guides
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inb4 caustic arrow gets a fat nerf in 3.11
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"Yeah, just after that fireball and static strike nerf. :P | |
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The having to kite with this build is not doable, this has the same problem as miners for me, having to stand still to do dmg. I just tried a T16 and couldnt even get the boss half way. Procing frenzy, 3 totems, mirage archer, and everytime i stopped to fire, it would either not proc my mirage archer (weird) or the boss would 1 hit me... Y'all swear by this build and I have yet to even make it to end game with this build. I do not understand it and I will not be trying "glass cannon" builds like this anymore until I can stop lag dying or getting 1 shot by everything somehow. This build is fun for clearing but make no mistake unless you have a ridiculous amount of currency, you will be using this on high yellow, low reds. Or maybe I'm just doing it wrong... IDK
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"You are probably doing something wrong. I can tell you, I'm a pretty mechanically weak player (contrary to author of this guide, Danka, who plays SSF HC and well... there you cannot die so you have to dodge everything), and the build works great for me, with some custom adjustments, for example I do not use frenzy (I use bloodrage for delirium and no frenzy charges for other content). All I use actively in "damage rotation" is caustic arrow, and on bosses the wither totem and self cast despair. What I killed so far: - Sirus 7 deathless (died on 5 and 6 before because it's my first season I'm even attempting him) - Katarina lvl 83 for achievement in 2-man party with ice shot deadeye who was dying a lot on it - Atziri in the temple of Atzoatl in 6 man party where 3 people died and 2 were waiting outside to get the league challenge while asking "is she dead yet?" >.> (nope it's not dead yet when she has hp for 6 man group and I have to solo it) - 100% delirious Elder Guardian for challenge deathless (lvl 14 white map, whatever is the name of the slam guy) - 100% delirious Shaper Guardian, died 3 times though (lvl 16 white map, Hydra, I'm bad at dodging water balls ok?) I rarely die on normal maps (i.e. alched lvl 16, I only reroll -max res and if it has a LOT of rippy mods combined), I'm not doing "lvl 19 full delirious" because yes, for that my damage is way too low to do it efficiently and comfortably. Well, I died on Voll (wasteland map) because I was stupid enough to try the "stand in consecrated ground" challenge on a lvl 14 map with extra boss damage mods, he charged me and 1 shot me, then I went to do that challenge on white map instead, did it first try. Also I died 6 times from Simulacrum bosses while doing the simulacrum challenges. But dying on normal mapping? Not being able to kill map end boss? That's weird. Feel free to inspect my character, but fair warning it's a heavily modded pathfinder to suit my own playstyle, however Danka did say Raider > Pathfinder from defensive standpoint and you don't have to spam flasks (which is something a lot of people hate). I don't get what do you mean by stand still to do damage, do you try to kill mobs with frenzy? That's only an auxiliary skill to apply the curse and frenzy charges, your main damage is caustic arrow, I don't even use mirage archer because I don't think it's very useful, the caustic ground area does not stack and if you want to increase coverage while mapping you can just use arrow nova (personally I don't like it due to the delay it incurs). Basically I only use caustic arrow while mapping (and flasks, and defensive skill, I have molten shell but can be swapped with steelskin for example), and on bosses I put totem, caustic arrow, hand cast curse and then afk (or run around like headless chicken) until any of them needs to be recast. Frenzy is meant to fill that "now what" afk gap, but it is NOT your main source of damage. I have extreme potato aim syndrome though so any direct targeting skill like frenzy fails for me, so I just hand cast curse which is a big circle and hard to miss. Now about your character, a few pointers: 1. You have lvl 19 caustic arrow. When you aren't in SSF, lvl 20 corrupted CA should be your first purchase when you reach lvl 70 to equip it. It's cheap even few days into the league not mentioning on the last week. By now, buying a lvl 21 CA should be VERY cheap and going 19 -> 21 is like going from white bow to +2 bow. For extremely cheap. Just swapping CA to 21 in your POB is a 25% damage increase (slightly more but I suck at maths). 2. I'm pretty sure awakened gems for chaos builds go for peanuts too, and they're basically lvl 21+ supports. Everyone plays herald stackers which makes gems they use more expensive and everything else dirt cheap. If you buy them, remember that 20 gcp investment into awakened swift affliction is very worth it (10% dot multi), void manipulation quality is fine too, vicious projectiles is worthless to quality so save your gcps. 3. I wouldn't bother with mirage archer, I play with conc effect always on because PF has increased area from ascendancy so it doesn't feel that bad. If you hate it though (the conc effect on raider), you can use efficacy or damage on full life (wouldn't recommend that one though if you have problem getting hit ofc). Imo mirage archer is only useful for toxic rain builds not caustic arrow, outside of very early levelling where you can't get any other supports except pierce and mirage. You can use Vorici bench in research for white sockets if you want to swap between arrow nova and conc effect in the same bow just don't be an idiot like me that white socketed a 4g1r1b bow and saw the blue socket didn't get changed. -.- Use a 5g1r bow and if it's rank 2 or 3 Vorici guaranteed 1 green socket will go white. 4. Get quality on your totem supports, allows to place wither totem faster so it feels less clunky. Tbh I would get quality on everything except: - auras (useless unless you're an aurabot and need the range) - main gem (21/0 is cheap, 21/20 or 21/23 is usually expensive and barely any difference, doesn't even add damage just area) - cwdt (wothless when linked with defensive gems which is 99% of what cwdt is used for) 5. cwdt steelskin in your current setup absorbs less than 700 damage, I don't know if that will save you from certain death, the guide has lvl 20 both, or you can manually cast it, it absorbs 2k at max rank, my personal setup for this season is guard skill + increased duration + dash + second wind (second wind will give 2 charges to dash but not to guard skills as they're "instant" but will reduce its cooldown) but that requires manual usage of guard skill. You can leave it on cwdt but consider higher level of it. 6. I wouldn't bother with phase run if you want to keep your frenzy charges, as it eats them away. I swap a slot between blood rage and phase run depending on map (no life regen or reduced recovery and bloodrage is out, phase run is in) but if I use phase run I concede to 0 frenzy charges playstyle. Having it on cwdt is probably a bad idea, eating away your preciously stacked frenzy charges. I tried cwdt + withering step, it's not that bad of a combo but you will need second wind linked to dash as withering step will eat away 1 dash charge when it procs and you want to have one to get out of Sirus "die beams" and whatnot. 7. I wouldn't bother with devoto, because it has no life and attack speed isn't very useful to this build imo. Movement speed raider has plenty already. You have 4k life. You need more. Also helmet enchant is not really mandatory, its value is about... 1.2 passive point? Personally I have 6k life with 0 life helmet and no flat life chest (only small % life on it) so how come you have only 4k? I would defo go for some 100 life helmet or close in your case. -9 chaos res aura craft on it is good, but expensive since the recent nerfs (req. lvl 85+ hunter helmet and a lot of fossil spam). 8. Voidwalkers should go as well. They have no life and 5 pierce is overkill imo. I was playing with 2 pierce like recommended by Danka (he recommended piercing shots node though not what I did), 1 from quiver implicit (yours is useless btw) and 1 from Aerodynamics cluster node, but I dropped that one for a more defensive oriented cluster instead and I play with 1 pierce and don't see that much issue. As I said, if area coverage is a problem, arrow nova is probably the solution, or dying sun flask. 9. You shouldn't have crafted life on rings, it's very easy to buy ones with 65+ life rolled on it already, if the only other thing you need is resists. You have some crazy overcapped cold res anyway, so you could definitely shift some of that budget into life. 10. If you use stygian vise I'd highly recommend getting "corrupted blood cannot be inflicted on you" jewel in it, it's very helpful against beyond mobs and bosses that can kill you with corrupted blood (piety, sirus, etc.) 11. Roll instant recovery on at least one of your life flasks. Surgeon prefix is worthless on a non-crit spec. You can craft an immunity suffix in bestiary then augment and after few crafts you should get something better. Quality your flasks when they're scoured (white) and then craft on them. 12. Why are you running Grace and a Jade Flask? And if you're not running normal grace (50% mana reserved) only Vaal Grace (which you can ofc) then why would you spend all the passives for Charisma? According to your character stats without grace but with jade flask and avatar of the chase passive you're already at evade cap so you're wasting 50% mana reserve for nothing. Just drop grace and the mana reserve nodes, use vaal grace if you like and swap to flesh & stone sand stance if you want to reserve some mana (it costs half the reservation grace does! no clue why discipline costs 35% but armor / evasion auras cost 50%) Or you could craft aspect of the crab for more defense instead of using flesh & stone, but one requires buying a beast and having a good enough item to put it on and the other costs only a gem socket... 13. Overflowing chalice (and Rotgut) are 2 flasks I hate with a passion. I see so many people use them and there rarely is a reason to do so. I would use either quicksilver, quartz (gives phasing = ailment immunity on demand for raider, and dodge for when vaal grace isn't available) or dying sun for extra projectiles (clearspeed). 14. I can't figure out where your last few passive points went. After filling the clusters (without the 2 redundant points on large and medium) it tells me required level 86 when you're 89. Did you miss a quest giving a passive? Did you help a bandit? (Don't.) 15. Your pathing is inefficient at some points. If you do not pick piercing shots, you should connect from below fangs of the viper and skip points right side of blood drinker and below coordination. That saves a passive point. I'd also probably try to buy a str base neck (amber) not dex because dex we have plenty on that side of the tree. Worst case you spend the saved point into prowess and get 30 str instead of 10. Also my recommendation is to ditch Grace, ditch Charisma and connect the tree from left side of Herbalism. Saves 4 points. 16. The rare jewels should aim to have % life on them, not just damage increases. 17. The cluster with "Eye to Eye" I'm kinda not sold on, pretty sure the "damage with hits against nearby enemies" wouldn't work for the dot part of CA. If you don't need the pierce node there's no reason to run a projectile medium jewel over one with let's say damage over time, that can roll much better variety of notables. For example Flow of Life can help you reach more life, Student of Decay can help you get a decent chunk of chaos res, Wicked Pall is just a great overall damage node, etc. The one you have with exposure therapy + brush with death I wouldn't change. Both of them are great nodes for survivability and damage. 18. There are some further improvements like better bow, empower lvl 4 or +1 to chaos / dex gems neck, better stygian vise, watcher's eye, but all of those will be more expensive, so I'm leaving them out for now. Everything I mentioned above is doable for cheap / quick fix. I have no idea what do you mean by "ridiculous amount of currency" because by the time you spend 10ex into the build (as long as it's 10ex spent wisely) you'll get around 80% effectiveness of the build and fairly functional, non glass cannon at all. Some builds don't start until 30ex+ (explody chest tailwind boots assassin anyone? not even mentioning herald stacker because that's having a heavy nerfhammer over its head) Miners on the other hand can be a bit squishy but do obnoxious amounts of damage on a shoestring budget, I have no idea why they haven't been nerfed yet. There's no build than can clear t16s cheaper than a miner. I "swear by this build" because I like builds that can do all map mods (read: ele reflect and no leech doesn't scare me), don't have clunky mechanics (long list goes here from melee gem swapping before every boss to necro's animated guardian and spectre management), are easy to league start with, are functioning on a budget (for me 30ex is around where the build should end, not start), and don't require precise targeting (rip spectral shield throw dream). I play since Synthesis and my current character died the least of all my past creations so "glass cannon" doesn't apply. And I never really played true glass cannon (like ye olde tornado shot deadeye before it got nerfed to the ground). Also since swap to Vulkan graphic mode I have much less delirium lag. Crashed to desktop twice and sometimes rubberbanded when dashing, but no more fps freezes. And under old system I had them every time I clicked delirium portal. TLDR: Buy lvl 21 caustic arrow. Get more life. 6k is very doable, 7k is achievable if you focus on it (not needed for softcore imo). 4k is too low. Ditch Grace and mana reserve nodes and fix your passive tree. I guarantee your experience in the game will feel better. And don't try to kill bosses with frenzy, just drop your CA puddle and totems and stay safe. If you wanna use frenzy a lot, I think hollow palm raider is a better suited build for that. P.S. Sorry for long post, but I couldn't believe someone would say this build is "glass cannon", "expensive" and "requires standing still to do damage". That's everything this build is not, especially when compared with typical ranger playstyle of ice shot / barrage. | |
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Not Kintsugi plus Wind Dancer? That would be 36% reduced total right?
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"Yeah, you're right. But being locked to 1 chest choice is much less interesting. Actually there are so many good influence mods on rare chests, both defensive and offensive, if anyone likes to dabble with crafting (I definitely do not). You could even use something like Carcass Jack or Cherrubim for a damage boost. |
