3.2 Ice Shot/Barrage Trickster - Poison Party Duo - Fast, 1m+ DPS, Budget

This build uses more uniques then I normally care to use, but they are all budget friendly.


Volkuur’s Guidance - The Key Unique of this build. Everything is Centralized around allowing our lightning damage to poison. I started with a pair of cold gloves until I could afford the more expensive lightning ones.

Maloney’s Nightfall - Life and attack speed, cheap enough to mass corrupt or get a +1 arrow for cheap later in the league. Also with all the layers of defence getting close enough to stibnite flask blind a boss is usually no problem solo. In a duo your partner will handle that for you.

Dendrobate - A free link with lesser poison as well as poison damage and duration if you have enough of the right stats. Top it off with a solid ~20% to all elemental resists and you have the perfect chest.

Thief’s Torment - While we give up almost 500 life and some damage potential for this ring, the life/mana on hit is amazing. Unless we get completely 1 shot for all of our hp, we almost instantly regen to full life. Makes the build feel like pre-nerf vaal pact. You can drop for life/damage/resists for other rings but be prepared to be too low on mans to blink arrow away due to Mind Over Matter without this ring. GG expensive opal rings with high life and mana rolls may be the only way I would drop this severely underrated ring.

Coralito’s Signature - More chance to poison as well as more poison damage. The diamond flask effect also helps make sure we keep Elemental Overload up and running.

Quill Rain* - Less/Reduced projectile damage does not affect damage over time anymore so the attack speed on Quill Rain is amazing for dps.
*Advanced Crafting Tip - Buy a 6l Short Bow (I paid 10c) and try to scour/chance it. I was able to do it in 5 tries. Results may vary.

The Wasp Nest
Dendrobate
Kaom's Roots
Fenums’ Weave - The source of hinder and Spider’s Web debuff.

Lycosidae - This is absolutely not required, however it is a pretty substantial DPS boost (15-20%).
Death's Hand - Budget alternative to Lycosidae.

Viper Strike Partner Build

Passive Tree (30 Passives)

We want to start making our way down to acrobatics. Pick up the life and the poison chance thats on the way. I leveled with poison split arrow and it worked fairly well all the way through. I got a Quill Rain drop on my golemancer build so I started with that right off the bat.

Passive Tree (60 Passives)

Now we want to finish off our chance to poison on hit. I was still using poison split arrow/barrage to level at this point. Get your Coralito’s Signature as soon as possible to help with bosses.

Passive Tree (90 Passives)

This is where I had a lot of trouble. My partner and I leveled separately due to schedule conflicts. I pushed through act 7 to act 10 with a Tempest borrowed from a friend and Wake of Destruction. I really needed the frenzy charges to help with my damage. I dropped poison for a while here, but I didn’t need to respec out of the points. All the flat lightning damage with Elemental Overload carried me through. Not my smoothest Kitava but only 1 death.

For this tree I tried to centralize poison damage and capping our chance to poison. I tried to get all the frenzy charges I could as well as still leaving enough points for defence as I could. Lastly I picked up Elemental Overload for a big dps boost. I originally saw this being either a Pathfinder or Raider build. Maybe even an Assassin build. I was almost going to scrap this idea as the dps just wasn’t there until I decided to run Trickster just to see. I was blown away. Hands down the highest and safest tree I had made. The only thing I’m lacking as you’ll see in the next section is accuracy.

I’ve talked about our defensive layers a few times now, let me show you what I mean.
Your partner will be using Abyssal Cry, Fenemus’ Weave for Web and Hinder and Temporal Chains once they get their dual curse amulet. We will be applying blind and chilled ground as well as more wither stacks. This gives enemies an 85% slow along with only a 50% chance to hit on top of your dodge.

We also take Mind Over Matter to help with our hp being so low. With our Thief’s Torment we’re able to refill our hp and mana almost instantly. I felt much tankier dropping the 500 life I lost equipping this ring. I’d say the times I survived due to wearing this ring is ten times the situations not having the 500 hp would have saved me.

For you rich folks:

For you HC fans:


Viper Strike Partner Build

Self Buff Settings



Enemy Settings



Flask Settings

*These numbers do not factor in your partner’s debuffs*

Ice Shot*


*This may seem very low. But remember this is just 1 enemy being attacked. I was nervous to run chain and greater multiple projectiles in a 4-link, but it was actually more damage and much faster clear speed because the extra hits combined with the aoe on hit actually meant more poison stacks building up at a much higher rate.

Barrage



Barrage with flasks on. Self buffs and Enemy settings still set to above.

Unfortunately much squishier than my average build. I may drop damage later for more health nodes

I will link gear once I’ve finished the build.

Barrage

Our boss killing skill

Barrage - Maximum poison stack delivery skill for single target.
Unbound Ailments - Increases our damage over time.
Greater Multiple Projectiles - More arrows = more poison stacks = more damage
Deadly Ailments - Also increased our damage over time.
Elemental Damage With Attacks - Poison is scaled off of the lightning damage we do. This makes us do more of it.
Added Lightning Damage - Increases our flat lightning damage before scaling effects.

Ice Shot
Our clear skill. Notice the damage effectiveness scaled by level on the ice shot gem.

Ice Shot - Great for clear with the high damage effectiveness and the aoe stacking on mobs with chain.
Greater Multiple Projectiles - More projectiles to chain around, causing overlapping explosions.
Chain - Causes our arrows to chain, this means the explosions can overlap in tight packs.
Added Lightning Damage - More flat lightning before scaling.
Elemental Damage With Attacks - Increase the elemental damage we put out.
Unbound Ailments - Increase our damage over time.

Blink Arrow

Blink Arrow - The movement skill for bow users.
Blind - The copy we leave behind will blind the nearest enemy. Useful when kiting scary things.

Auras

Wrath - Large amount of flat lightning damage.
Herald of Thunder - Slightly smaller source of flat lightning damage but still helpful. You can turn this off if you feel you’re having mana issues without taking too big of a damage hit.

Utility

This is where we generate our frenzies on single target as well as curse big mobs and bosses.

Frenzy - Produces Frenzy Charges for us that we share with our partner via Conduit.
Faster Attacks - Generate these charges faster to get back to our main skill.
Curse on Hit - If we’re doing this occasionally why not make the most out of it by cursing on hit as well.
Despair - Increase our damage over time as well as add flat chaos to hits which also scales our poison damage.

Wither

Your partner also runs one. This allows us to hit the wither cap all the time or to keep at least 1 totem up as we kite scary things.

Wither - This debuff increases damage our poison damage and hinders our enemies.
Spell Totem - This casts it for us so we don’t have to.
Faster Casting - This makes our totem get more stacks on the enemy faster.
Increased Duration - This support makes our debuff and totem last longer. Casting your totem less often means more time to attack and dodge.

For our jewels we want to look for these mods:
Increased Lightning Damage>Damage With Poison>Damage Over Time>Attack Speed With Bows>Maximum Life>Maximum Mana

If you are not using thief’s torment I highly recommend +2 mana on hit.

The main focus of this duo is to run cooperative buffs and debuffs. We each bring a little of both to the table. Some do overlap, but this allows for kiting and easy escape opening. Having two hinder totems lets us leapfrog between totems for example. You have to remember these are definitely not tanks, and I would not be surprised to see us drop damage later to stack some more survivability. We keep both power and frenzy charges capped on boss fights, keep a reliable 75% in total slowing debuffs up at all times and blind in multiple ways. The viper strike build gains damage per poison stack the barrage user applies, and the barrage user gets a damage boost from the web debuff applied by the viper strike user. The dps in these builds is fairly even in realistic terms. The melee build will have to kite and dodge more often while the ranged build needs to be close enough to maximize projectiles hitting their target due to the spread on barrage. If you plan to run these builds in extreme late game conditions be prepared to use real teamwork to help keep eachother alive and get the most out of their potential.

Viper Strike Partner Build

Solo

This build solo isn’t too much different then when it’s played as a duo. Remember to keep your distance from the mobs. Your partner won’t be there to intercept and debuff. Clear using ice shot, anything that ice shot doesn’t kill use barrage. If it’s really stubborn drop your wither totem. As you clear you’ll generate charges, but on bosses you’ll need to use your frenzy. The boss skill rotation is a bit more than your basic run and gun. Frenzy up to max charges, drop your totem and spam barrage. Again be sure to keep your distance, close enough to land majority of your arrows, far enough to not get killed.

Duo

This build feels much better with your duo partner. The damage doesn’t feel horribly different but it is so much easier to position yourself. You and your partner should fly through most things. Don’t waste your time barraging anything except the tankiest of things and try not to let the safety go to your head. You’re one tough map rolled exile from getting killed. On bosses the same rotation applies as above. The only difference is if you need to help your partner kite a hard hitting boss. Try to keep your blink arrow clone in a position to blind the boss as much as you can. Keep your charges topped off and keep your wither totem spaced enough from your partners that the boss is always being debuffed no matter where they go. If the boss fight has a lot of adds and you need to kite, don’t be afraid to use ice shot. It will clear and leave chilled ground for an additional 10% slow to help you guys position yourselves.

Viper Strike Partner Build

Can we contact you in-game or through messages? - No. Please keep all questions to our forum posts. We check them frequently and will answer all in the threads.

Isn’t poison a waste of time? Lots of builds hit 1-2 mil dps nowadays without the downsides. - These builds have quite a bit of potential. The damage output shown does not show min/maxed scaling or the debuffs of eachother. With both builds sharing the weight of the debuffs they run fairly smoothly.

How can you call two 6-link items budget? - I made one of them for less than 20c, crafting tip above, and with the free lesser poison on dendrobate I was killing yellow bosses in a 4-link. I finally paid 20c for a 5-link and it’s doing just fine. Path of Building puts a 5-link barrage over 500k dps.

I want to play solo. What do I change? - The only change to play solo is drop conduit for phase acrobatics. Just remember to play safe and keep your distance from hard hitting bosses. Try to position your blink arrow clone in a good place to distract and blind tough mobs.
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