An extensive guide on Chaos-DoT Spells ft. ED, Bane & Co [3.14 rdy]

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infrasonicreturns wrote:

So before I read this post, what I switched to doing for single target is applied multiple blight totems (don't have a socket in my tree for Spreading rot yet), applied Bane (for single curse), then threw an ED on the target. Sounds like I am doing it correctly. Only things I don't do are Withered (since I already have blight and vaal blight on multiple totems, although only 1 totem seems to go off when I cast vaal blight), and contagion (since Contagion is for spreading).


Does that make sense? Anything better I should be doing as I head into maps?

Yes, your doing it right (as soon as you start using some form of withered).
(On a side-note; ensure that your blight-totems actually deal relevant damage, otherwise wither-totems are better cze of range + survivablity)

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KingCaspianXI wrote:

Super helpful guide. Thank you for the post and the work it must have taken to make.

I am attempting to apply your guide to my Toxic Rain Pathfinder.

the build I'm currently attempting to follow is this one. https://www.poe-vault.com/guides/toxic-rain-pathfinder-build-guide

However, I would like to get your opinion on making it less dependent on Herald of Agony. It feels poison heavy to me.

First of all, thanks for the praise :)
I skimmed through the guide and, well, it's a poison build.
a) I am not sure if focusing on the inherent DoT of Toxic Rain actually can make a viable build, since I haven't played that. Plus b): I guess if you really don't want a poison build you'll need a different guide. I see almost nothing in there which I would include into a CDoT-character.

Do Spreading Rot jewels really don't stack? As if they don't apply two stacks of Withered instead of one, or did you mean that it's just useless to speed up Withered application, if this is the case.

Spreading Rot does not stack the withered-application.
With one Spreading Rot, "Blight inflicts withered". With two, "Blight inflicts withered".

2 Spreading Rots will stack the increased damage and the increased hinder duration and that's rarely (never?) worth it.

So basically the 2nd Spreading Rot, well

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Lightelder wrote:

my-plan-for-this-leagues-cdot-char

Low life Shavronne's Wrappings has been part of my first CDoT char back in 3.6. Ever since I fancied the idea of going Low Life with Coruscating Elixier and Pathfinder. It's on my build-bucket-list since an eternity (alongside Traps and Mines and a Summoner)

Eventually I realised that all other Pathfinder-Ascendancies are borderline useless (immune to elemental ailments, 15% inc. movementspeed and 50% inc. AoE is not a good turnout from 3 Ascendancy points). So I'll finally build a Scion-Pathfinder and it won't even be an aura bot (witch starting position is also so much better than rangers for CDoT). I'll post updates here eventually.

The concept looks promising, especially on defenses and the additional Scion-skill-points should be great to dive deep into cluster jewels.

Since I can't bump this post anymore (too old, but I keep it updated), lemme bump this by talking about my Delirium experience without being asked :)

I recently had to downgrade my internet conncection. While I really enjoyed theorycrafting my Scion-CDoT-ClusterJewel-Char for the league, framerates became unbearable in maps. So I retired before reaching my last lab. I expect to get hyped again once the new league info releases but I don't think I'll be in it for the long grind in the upcoming league. Imo my plan is to go SSF into yellow maps and then call it a day.

The guide will remain updated, cluster jewels won't make it in there soon (because I personally have too little experience with them) and in about three more month I should have moved to a better (internet) location and upgraded my tec to go hard again (thumbs pressed).

Hello exiles,

the new league has me on the hypetrain again and will try out my second Bane-Occultist since Incursion. Because I don't like playing stuff twice, even two years later, this will be my twist:

I will be getting the Divine Flesh timeless keystone and max out to 90% chaos res (which is great with Occultist due to 60% chaos res on the Withering Presence Ascendency). This should make for amazing damage mitigation against Ele-damage and turn chaos damage irrelevant.

If the concept fails in reality (cooking up your own builds is always risky^^), I'll swap to Corrupted Soul + MoM for a triple lifepool (ES+Mana+Life).

And now the breaking news: The guide is now 3.11 rdy, feel free to share questions, inspirations, build ideas, ... I'm curious :)

Awesome thread. I see that you covered totems and mines/traps, but what are your thoughts on the new Arcanist Brand gem? I'm curious if you think it would interact well with ED/Cont or any other CDOT?

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Hanwool wrote:

Awesome thread. I see that you covered totems and mines/traps, but what are your thoughts on the new Arcanist Brand gem? I'm curious if you think it would interact well with ED/Cont or any other CDOT?

I can give a less speculative answer as soon as the level 20 gems get published, imo I suspect two applications:

Utility: Link a bunch of stuff that you don't want to selfcast; Curses, Golems, ...
Maybe it somehow works with Smoke Mine for blinding (the movement interaction would be bonkers, most likely doesn't work)

Soulrend: All CDoTs have good to decent uptime and can be selfcast quite effortlessly. The two exceptions are Blight (imo Arcanist Brand won't function with channeling skills) and Soulrend. Having a 5-6L Arcanist Soulrend Brand could be a decent setup for mapping and for bossing, if used alongside another DoT.

Both ideas kind of depend on activation frequency, cooldown of linked skills and duration of the Brand.
GGG changes brands so that they won't just jump from enemy to enemy across the map but will have to be recast. That might make selfcasting or other workarounds (totems, triggers, ...) more effective. I'm hyped, I don't know, we'll see :)

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Hanwool wrote:

Awesome thread. I see that you covered totems and mines/traps, but what are your thoughts on the new Arcanist Brand gem? I'm curious if you think it would interact well with ED/Cont or any other CDOT?

Now that the level 20 gems are published; *UPDATE* (elaborate answer because this reply will soonish become the Brand section of the guide^^)


I think Utility will be niche, Arcanist Soulrend Brand for mapping might be possible and Arcanist Soulrend Brand for bossing is niche or bad. Lemme explain.

I'll call it Soulbrand for now :)

Utility: Doesn't work with minions or mines, ok. Might be useful to "selfcast" 2-3 curses and you might even throw a guard skill in there, making your CwDT-setup obsolete. That would have drawbacks but could save gemslots and other investments.

Mapping: The damage penalty is very heavy and the necessity to recast brands limits the quality of life. Soulbrand seems slightly worse than ED+Contagion. A specialist build might make it work. And the quality of life of instant Brand Recalling instead of double-casting EB+Contagion might make it work, too. Arcanist Brands supported skills have "limited projectile range", we don't know yet how impactful that'll be on Soulbrand.

My hopes were on bossing, but Soulbrand falls short. Essence Drain (a compareable skill due to similar uptime and mana cost) will deal 25% more damage than Soulbrand.
The saving grace for Soulbrand could be one of two things imo: Your build really needs the integrated ES-leech more than ED's life regen (or Banes curse utility). Or you have an immense amount of +x to gem level*. This will be the case only on niche builds if at all.






There is a different fun idea: Arcanist Brand can support channeling skills: BLIGHTBRAND
Pro: Massive reduction of our cast time / stationary time
Con: Massive reduction of cast speed. Blight cast time: 0.3s, Blightbrand activation frequency 1s.
1.0 * x = 0.3 -> x = 0.3 -> 70% less cast speed.
To fix this, one would need the Runebinder keystone (which is a real possibility) and then this setup compares positively to Blight-Totems. I'll think about it some more :)
*edit* Blight loves Infused Channelling Support and I have absolutely no clue if that will work with Blightbrand, probably not or at least it won't grant the infusion buff.

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There is a different fun idea: Arcanist Brand can support channeling skills: BLIGHTBRAND
Pro: Massive reduction of our cast time / stationary time
Con: Massive reduction of cast speed. Blight cast time: 0.3s, Blightbrand activation frequency 1s.
1.0 * x = 0.3 -> x = 0.3 -> 70% less cast speed.
To fix this, one would need the Runebinder keystone (which is a real possibility) and then this setup compares positively to Blight-Totems. I'll think about it some more :)
*edit* Blight loves Infused Channelling Support and I have absolutely no clue if that will work with Blightbrand, probably not or at least it won't grant the infusion buff.

Tried playing around with this idea, but unfortunately Arcanist Brand does not support channeled skills :(

Greetings.
Thanks for the great guide.
I got a newb question if u dont mind..
If I use both souldrend and essence drain with spellslinger is it ok?
As I read dot does not stack but there are some guides that uses both skills.
Thanks..