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

Really nice build. I've tried TR/CA/HoA Pathfinder in previous league but wasn't impressed, while liked clearing with CA. This build is, on another hand, is more focused offensively, and more importantly, defensively. Plus Raider as an added bonus. Kudos ;)

Btw, two last slots in Frenzy setup are Accuracy and Enhance. Why not taking something like Faster Attack or Knockback instead of Enhance? Or even Blind for extra evasion when flasks are down...

Definitely, my starter for 3.12.

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DankawSL wrote:

Useful Alternate Quality Gems:
* Frenzy - Fires an additional Projectile
* Despair - 10% increased Effect of Curse (MAYBE, not sure)
* Malevolence - You and nearby allies have 10% increased Skill Effect Duration
* Dread Banner - 60% less Skill Effect Duration / Nearby Enemies deal 2% less Damage
* Generosity Support - Supported Skills have 100% increased Aura Area of Effect / Supported Skills have 10% increased Mana Reserved
* Blight (if you can corrupt it into Vaal Blight) - 60% increased Secondary Duration

I'm little disappointed in majority of alterante quality options. Diversity it decent for many options, but there's clearly couple of favorites that are very interesting or straight up broken. Definitely none of my builds are in that category.

Caustic Arrow Default 10% increased Area of Effect
Alternate Quality 1 20% chance to inflict Withered on Hit
Alternate Quality 2 20% of Physical Damage Converted to Chaos Damage

I was expecting something better for CA to, but I think the 20% phys conversion isn't that bad.
Considering that you can craft some flat phys in the bow, wouldn't be a good way to take advantage of this alt quality?

"

Karchuk wrote:

Spoiler

Really nice build. I've tried TR/CA/HoA Pathfinder in previous league but wasn't impressed, while liked clearing with CA. This build is, on another hand, is more focused offensively, and more importantly, defensively. Plus Raider as an added bonus. Kudos ;)

Btw, two last slots in Frenzy setup are Accuracy and Enhance. Why not taking something like Faster Attack or Knockback instead of Enhance? Or even Blind for extra evasion when flasks are down...

Definitely, my starter for 3.12.

Because for the most part you shouldn't bother with 6-link Kintsugi. If actually manage to get it then there's specific 6-link setup (listed under optional setups) with Awakened CoH and Enhance in order to boost their effectiveness. Enhance boosts both curses and Frenzy too, so you do get extra defence.

Speaking of Enfeeble, i wonder if there's a reason to use it now... It got nerfed badly, maybe Punishment is better now?

"

dHsn wrote:

I was expecting something better for CA to, but I think the 20% phys conversion isn't that bad.
Considering that you can craft some flat phys in the bow, wouldn't be a good way to take advantage of this alt quality?

It's not bad, but not for this build. Hit damage doesn't matter, so 20% conversion is literally useless.

I chose to use withering step instead of totems, so it is a significant loss in DPS due to capping at 7 wither stacks, but I like the way it plays quite a bit more. And harvest DPS isnt an issue anyway, my DPS is 1.8mil not including wither. If you look at my gear youll notice not using totem does allow gem space for a few QOL things. I also opted to run vitality, which is even easier now with the change to mana reservation for vitality. It also got a buff to the amount of life per second it gives for all builds under 15k health. They also buffed the flat life regen on gear. Im at 1k life regen/second now - similar gear with vitality in heist will be even higher. Feels like theres always a pot running and feels really, really nice when combined with instant healing health pots that normally dont always top you off with only one use due to large health pool.

EDIT: I have a flask to cure bleeding but have also noticed with this much health regen it often counters a decent portion of the bleed so I don't have to react to cleanse the bleed as fast.

"

DankawSL wrote:

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Karchuk wrote:

Spoiler

Really nice build. I've tried TR/CA/HoA Pathfinder in previous league but wasn't impressed, while liked clearing with CA. This build is, on another hand, is more focused offensively, and more importantly, defensively. Plus Raider as an added bonus. Kudos ;)

Btw, two last slots in Frenzy setup are Accuracy and Enhance. Why not taking something like Faster Attack or Knockback instead of Enhance? Or even Blind for extra evasion when flasks are down...

Definitely, my starter for 3.12.

Because for the most part you shouldn't bother with 6-link Kintsugi. If actually manage to get it then there's specific 6-link setup (listed under optional setups) with Awakened CoH and Enhance in order to boost their effectiveness. Enhance boosts both curses and Frenzy too, so you do get extra defence.

Speaking of Enfeeble, i wonder if there's a reason to use it now... It got nerfed badly, maybe Punishment is better now?

"

dHsn wrote:

I was expecting something better for CA to, but I think the 20% phys conversion isn't that bad.
Considering that you can craft some flat phys in the bow, wouldn't be a good way to take advantage of this alt quality?

It's not bad, but not for this build. Hit damage doesn't matter, so 20% conversion is literally useless.

Curse on hit no longer applies 2 curses as of harvest so you won't run two curses anyway right? Knowing all we will use in Heist is despair (I would assume) the only question is; how do we want to apply it now? Self cast or curse on hit? Or curse on hit on ring?

"

DankawSL wrote:

Speaking of Enfeeble, i wonder if there's a reason to use it now... It got nerfed badly, maybe Punishment is better now?
.
.
It's not bad, but not for this build. Hit damage doesn't matter, so 20% conversion is literally useless.

This is precisely why Punishment is garbage. It was better than Vulnerability for melee in previous league, but now it's only feasible for (heavy)hitters.

Enfeeble still provides some benefits. Temporal chains might be worth considering as well. Or Sniper's Mark for flask charges. Maybe Blind as replacement for Enfeeble? Hit chance will be even lower, although w/o damage reduction, but might work on hex-proof and bosses at 100% efficiency.

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Adinay_Locksley wrote:

Curse on hit no longer applies 2 curses as of harvest so you won't run two curses anyway right?

You need awakened curse on hit rank5 to apply 2 (now renamed to awakened hextouch). Only change is it cannot apply "marks" it can still apply 2 curses of non-mark category.

But it's expensive and kinda a luxury.

"

Karchuk wrote:

This is precisely why Punishment is garbage. It was better than Vulnerability for melee in previous league, but now it's only feasible for (heavy)hitters.

I thought the part where mobs take increased damage on low life would still apply? Or it doesn't to dots? I know intimidate doesn't, but aspect of the spider does and it's also "enemies take increased damage" category.

Viktranka you saved me from myself yet again... I have a level 5 awakened CoH and didn't notice that it allowed 2 curses because I didn't re-read it when it hit level 5. I got lucky and this dropped from Sirus in Harvest. Time to trade out additional accuracy for another curse on my standard character.

"

Adinay_Locksley wrote:

Spoiler

I chose to use withering step instead of totems, so it is a significant loss in DPS due to capping at 7 wither stacks, but I like the way it plays quite a bit more. And harvest DPS isnt an issue anyway, my DPS is 1.8mil not including wither. If you look at my gear youll notice not using totem does allow gem space for a few QOL things. I also opted to run vitality, which is even easier now with the change to mana reservation for vitality. It also got a buff to the amount of life per second it gives for all builds under 15k health. They also buffed the flat life regen on gear. Im at 1k life regen/second now - similar gear with vitality in heist will be even higher. Feels like theres always a pot running and feels really, really nice when combined with instant healing health pots that normally dont always top you off with only one use due to large health pool.

EDIT: I have a flask to cure bleeding but have also noticed with this much health regen it often counters a decent portion of the bleed so I don't have to react to cleanse the bleed as fast.

I would say that it's a huge dps loss against certain bosses. I would never drop Wither Totem. It's fast, reliable and nearly doubles damage against bosses.

If you run lvl 20 Vitality then it means you're not running Aspect of the Crab. That's a no-no for me. As much as i love regen i simply can't justify dropping 20% phys damage reduction.

Personally i run bleed immunity on utility flask as well, and later opt in for Watcher's Eye mod to be able to run 3% regen during flask effect. Even tho degens don't seems to do much damage with lots of regen, i can't forget some ridiculous Corrupted Blood mob packs that could kill me in 1 second. Be a little too late, take an unfortunate hit and say hello to standard.

"

Adinay_Locksley wrote:

Curse on hit no longer applies 2 curses as of harvest so you won't run two curses anyway right? Knowing all we will use in Heist is despair (I would assume) the only question is; how do we want to apply it now? Self cast or curse on hit? Or curse on hit on ring?

It still works (almost) the same way. You still gain extra curse when you lvl 5.

"

Karchuk wrote:

Spoiler

This is precisely why Punishment is garbage. It was better than Vulnerability for melee in previous league, but now it's only feasible for (heavy)hitters.

Enfeeble still provides some benefits. Temporal chains might be worth considering as well. Or Sniper's Mark for flask charges. Maybe Blind as replacement for Enfeeble? Hit chance will be even lower, although w/o damage reduction, but might work on hex-proof and bosses at 100% efficiency.

Punishment is significantly worse dps-wise for melee. That's absolutely true. However i'm talking from CA perspective where it's a quite good option - not for damage but for defense.

Problem with Enfeeble and Temporal Chains is that curse effectiveness against bosses is only 66% or 33%. This means their defensive properties are significantly reduced. HOWEVER. Hitting enemies cursed by Punishment applies Debilitate debuff which causes 20% less movement speed and 10% less damage dealt by monsters for 2 seconds. I think debuff's effectiveness shouldn't change regardless of curse effectiveness. I might be wrong so i'll try to test it at some point.

Usually you curse only bosses and sometimes tanky as hell rares. Against rares you will have flasks anyway. As for bosses, you can dodge their attacks easily, base evasion+dodge is usually sufficient and the scariest bosses kill you with spells anyway. I would only use Blind support if i had to facetank the boss.

From marks, only Warlord makes sense and it's a pretty good candidate actually. Unaffected by monster rarity, 5% chance to gain endurance charge on hit up to 11% with lvl 4 Enhance. That's 12% phys damage reduction. Seems good for me. Sadly it doesn't work against elemental damage like Debilitate which on the other hand has low uptime.

For now Enfeeble is still default defensive curse.

Agreed I wouldn't ever suggest using withering step instead of totem to anyone else, especually outside of harvest crafting. With how high you could get DPS in harvest I opted to use withering step instead because I like the way it plays a lot more... and once you break 2mil dps im not sure how much it matters. Sirus phases for me pretty quickly without totem. In heist though, back to normal in terms of power of gear I guess? Idk harvest was my first league in this game so I'll be learning what the game is really like and may have to min-max a bit more vs customizing based on my style. I just don't enjoy casting totems, idk why...