[3.9] Aziire's Venom Gyre Assassin - Dodge & Freeze Everything!

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robfitz wrote:

This happens because you've got 90% phys to cold, and only 50% phys to chaos, so you end up with "actual" 64% to cold and 36% to chaos.

I am pretty sure that this is not how it works. Conversion built into the gem itself takes priority and cannot be diluted by other sources of conversion. Hrimsorrow alone is enough to convert the remaining 50% to cold.

Thus with Hrimsorrow you have 50% cold and 50% chaos damage and are done. Any more phys -> cold conversion will not make a difference.

I think the real reason the DPS in PoB doesn't change much is because there are really only 9 passive points and 1 support gem dedicated to scaling the elemental damage. Most of the passive tree is scaling physical damage, damage with claws, critical strikes, etc., as are the support gems (except WED), so the damage source conversion doesn't matter.

As a sort of pivot, I was considering making a Raider with Cobra Lash (or Venom Gyre) and scaling hit damage as well. The gear/tree would be almost identical (since you even connect to the ranger starting point). There's a new Blight unique ring that chills poisoned enemies on hit. That means you could run something like CL (or VG) - Vicious Proj - GMP - Nightblade - Hypothermia - (choose 6th link from fork, added chaos, damage on full life, etc.). Hypothermia will always work, allowing you to still chill/freeze everything even with no investment into cold damage.

I never plugged my idea into PoB and wasn't sure if I could scale the hit damage high enough to be comfortable, but you've convinced me that it's possible. I'm not enamored by poison, but the mechanics of Venom Gyre and Cobra Lash look so fluid.

Is pathing from fangs of the viper through resourcefulness and blood drinker to the claw nodes worth it early?
Compared to fangs of the viper straight to revenge of the haunted then around to the claw nodes which is your current leveling setup.

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Conversion built into the gem itself takes priority and cannot be diluted by other sources of conversion.

You're totally right, I didn't know that, and it means that my gearing-in-PoB solution isn't quite right. So I guess the final damage would be slightly lower (since you're getting 50% cold instead of 66).

I was wondering about some sort of Raider variant also...

I'm going to start out with poison Venom Gyre assassin, mixing in Plague Bearer as the single target boost. It seems... okay. I'm not getting any especially exciting numbers on PoB. But the nice thing about Plague Bearer is that since it doesn't use your character passives for its damage, you can basically ignore all the DoT nodes and hopefully have it at max potential without sacrificing much from the Venom Gyre hits. (Though it will be slower to fill up than if you had lots of chaos damage multiplier, of course.)

I'm probably gimping myself, but I'm just too much of a sucker for combo mechanics to skip this one.

Will use this build as a leauge starter. I hope this build is viable for it.

Thanks for such a well-written guide, I will use this as my league starter.

@rlauren2

Yeah you are right, the gem has order of priority. We do scale a lot of Physical though like you said, the build should be all good. I'm mostly going Assassin for the Elusive Effect bonuses, Raider is a really nice option like you have said though. The new ring is really nice, however every man and their dog will be wanting it. On top of that, if it is rare it will be a huge sought after ring as it is pretty pog. That's the main reason why I didn't really plan around it, I think it will be more costy than even a Pandemonious and both provide the chill on hit. If Cobra Lash turns out to feel a lot better I will make the switch (only need to gem swap) however I predict I will like Venom Gyre more.

@celeritas314

It's personal preference. I feel like the abundance of skill points you have early make it fairly non issue as it doesn't take long to get through those Levels.

@robfitz

Plague Bearer is probably a really good option, I didn't look into it at all cause I am fairly pepega. I play pretty lazy styles, one button warrior.

Hey man, im going to play this build probably, but i'd also like to make one of my own sometime. Any advice?

@mystic8ball

Making your own build isn't actually as hard as it seems. For me a vast majority of my time is spent formatting the guide so it looks good, in terms of just doing one yourself on Path of Building though it's just practice.

It's a lot easier if you have a concept you know you want to do, rather than only having a skill. For example this guide, I knew I wanted to do a Cold Damage Venom Gyre, so it just comes down to how to scale that the best. Use poe.ninja and look at how other people path their trees so you have an idea etc. You will have heaps of build that don't work well, even I redid my tree for this one multiple times before I was satisfied.

Tarke Cat actually made a really good video on this for new players making their own build, would definitely recommend watching it for a rundown of the process etc.

isnt using poison ascends better then +2 crit chance from infusions?

@ugrolol

Yeah if you were wanting to do any amount of Poison DPS then going that route would be ideal, however I have zero interest in Poison so I would go Deadly Infusion all day every day.