[ 3.15 ] Poison SST Pathfinder - 10M+ DPS. Amazing clear. Offscreen kills. All content. SUPER fun

When looking at your gear and figuring out how to improve your DPS, here are the keys to ramping up poison DPS.

For a single target, poison DPS is: Damage per poison * attack rate. There's no limit to the number of poisons that can be applied to an enemy.

Pretty simple, right? Well, maybe not. Let's break it down.

Damage per poison

Damage per poison is: Hit damage * 0.3 * Poison duration * Sum of increases/decreases * EACH more * damage over time multiplier.

Hit damage is the Physical plus Chaos damage of the hit itself. The important sources are YOUR SHIELD(!), unholy might, and any added flat damage or damage increases from your gear. "Increased attack damage" only impacts this part of the equation.

Poison DPS was changed in 3.15 from 20% to 30% of the hit, subsequently hit damage became much more important relative to the other parts of this equation.

Duration is the length of time that each poison lasts for. Notably, this is unrelated to your "skill effect duration", so be careful and look for "ailment duration" or "poison duration". Temporal chains increases the duration of poison by 40%, which is why it's worth it to go 4 passives away to get Whispers of Doom so you can apply both Despair and Temporal Chains.

Total Increases/decreases. The sum of your increases/decreases is multiplied in the damage per poison equation. The important sources are the tree, Dendrobate, and Circle of Nostalgia.

More. Each "More" value is multiplied individually in the damage per poison equation. In addition to your support gems, your sources are Frenzy Charges, Malevolence, and Herald of Agony.

Damage over time multiplier. DoT Multi is much less important here than would be typical in poison builds prior to 3.15. You still will end up with a multiplier of at least 2.5 from the tree, jewels (especially when you get a watcher's eye), weapon, or wherever you can fit some in.

Attack rate

Attack speed is literally 50% of the DPS equation, so it's very important!

Unlike most attack skills, the attack speed of SST is not based on your weapon (your shield has no local attack speed). This means that your attack rate calculated as:

Base rate * 0.9 * Sum of increases

Base rate is 0.6 at gem level 20, 0.59 at level 21.

Vicious Projectiles support is 10% less attack speed.

The important sources of increased attack speed outside of the normal tree are:

1. Frenzy charges
2. Onslaught (from boots or silver flask)
3. Blood Rage
4. Base jewels. "Attack Speed" and "Attack Speed While Holding A Shield" together give you 11% increased attack speed per jewel.
5. Tailwind (if you can get it on your boots)
6. Ice Golem
7. Cluster notables like Feed the Fury

Since SST isn't available until Level 28, and a high evasion shield is required, you need to use another skill to start. I personally like Cobra Lash, but you can pick your favorite physical or poison skill and it will work for the early game.

You'll want to start with a claw, as the life gain on hit makes the leveling process a lot smoother.

For movement you should start with Whirling Blades as your primary movement skill. Link it with Faster Attacks as soon as possible.
A secondary movement skill like Smoke Mine is necessary for crossing gaps or weird stairs or whatever. Flame dash works as well, this one is really up to your preference.

You'll want to pick up Withering Step as soon as possible, and VERY IMPORTANT: put it on left click. The speed, elusive, and wither stacks are all relevant.

In Act 2 pick up Herald of Agony and Herald of Purity. The two heralds add up to more damage than Malevolence, and Sentinels of Purity take some of the heat off of you during boss fights. If you link Withering Touch support to both it will help with area bosses.

Once you hit your mid 30s you'll want to do your first Lab. At this point you should take Nature's Reprisal for phys->chaos conversion. If you're wanting to speed through acts, Nature's Adrenaline will work just fine.

Pick up Summon Ice Golem for additional accuracy. Summon Lightning Golem works as well, and is what is used in the end-game. Putting it in a 4-link with your heralds and Withering Touch is also good.

In your mid-40s you can craft a reasonable shield by using an Enameled Shield base and essences of Doubt. At this point you can swap to Spectral Shield Throw. Link it with Added Chaos Damage and Chance to Poison
(flat damage is very important early on). Then add Unbound Ailments, Vicious Projectiles, and Void Manipulation as they become available and as your sockets allow.

The rest of the acts are pretty straightforward. Get bigger shields where possible. Try to get good global stats in your main hand (look for global accuracy, Chaos DoT multi and DoT multi).

Link Fortify with Whirling Blades for more survivability.

Start using Blood Rage as soon as your passive life regen will allow it (so you don't die if you're not in combat).

As soon as you can afford it, get a 6-link Dendrobate. At this point you can drop the now-redundant Chance to Poison and replace it with Fork to dramatically improve your clear speed.

For the remaining ascendancies you'll want to pick Master Toxicist, Nature's Adrenaline, and Nature's Boon in that order.

The Shield is by far the most important piece of equipment. Get a shield with >2200 evasion minimum, and preferably at least 2400. If you're having DPS problems of any kind, especially single target, look at your shield. Fortunately, it's very easy to craft.

1) Get an UNINFLUENCED ilvl 86+ Lacquered Buckler. Uninfluenced bases have a higher % chance to roll the evasion mods, ilvl 86 is required for t1 % increased evasion, and Lacquered Bucklers have the highest evasion base. These cost about 8-10c and drop regularly from lv84+ maps if you change your loot filter.
2) Use Perfect Fossils to get quality to at least 28
3) Spam Deafening Essence of Doubt. You can get them for 2c individually or 3-4c in bulk. This gives 400+ flat evasion, which is higher than the t1 prefix equivalent. You'll want to spam them until you hit the 100%+ increased evasion rating t1 prefix. According to CraftOfExile it will take, on average, 31 tries, which is 70-100c. See here.
4) If you have an empty prefix, bench craft (18-21)% increased Evasion Rating, +(14-16) to maximum Life. Or, if you have an empty suffix you can craft +(21-25) to Intelligence, +(15-18)% to Quality. The suffix will also help with your Dendrobate intelligence woes.

This will give you a shield with at least 2,200 evasion for about 100c on average.

You can go further in the endgame by:

5) Using T4 Hillock to get 30% quality. You can do it yourself by putting Hillock in Fortification, leveling him to rank 3, and then killing Catarina. However, you can just buy it from TFT, where the going rate is about 1 ex.
6) Keep spamming essences until you also hit %inc evasion/block recovery. Then bench craft +int +quality suffix. This will take 100 essences or so.
7) Five of the seven Redeemer suffixes are good, so if you have an extra suffix use a Redeemer's Exalted Orb



Perfectly rolled you will end up with 2,610 evasion on your shield. My shield is 1% off of perfect, which comes out to 2,601. This is 1,508 to 2,089 base damage from your main skill alone. It took about 4ex to craft, which is significantly cheaper than any shield on trade that has anywhere near this amount of evasion.

The Shield



Evasion base shield with as much evasion as you can possibly get. See above for how to craft one.

Until you can get a shield with more than 2,000 evasion, it's advisable to use an armour-based shield. You can get a shield with 2,800 armour for less than 1 ex.

In the final build the evasion from your shield accounts for almost half of your total evasion rating, so it's worth it to switch once you can get a high-evasion shield.

Chest



6-Link Dendrobate. This is mandatory, and will provide a bigger DPS boost than (almost) any rare chest you can craft. Luckily it's also pretty cheap, at around 50c. They're even cheap enough to temple double corrupt, if you've got the dough. It took me 4 tries to hit a relevant implicit (41% increased damage), but of course this is all RNG.

Helmet



Starkonja's Head with Spectral Shield Throw Fires 5 Additional Shard Projectiles enchant. These run 5-7ex. The enchant is very, very important.

There aren't a ton of relevant mods on rare helmets, and the ones that are relevant are very hard to roll. Subsequently, I wouldn't worry too much about upgrades here unless you find yourself lacking in resists from your other gear.



Main Hand



Any dagger or claw which has relevant global stats. In order of importance:

1) Chaos DoT multi suffix
2) DoT multi suffix
3) Physical damage as extra chaos damage prefix (or an open prefix to bench craft it) or hunter suffix
4) Increased chaos damage veiled prefix
5) Increased chaos DoT hunter prefix
4) Global accuracy suffix
5) Life or mana leech prefixes

Amulet



Rare amulet with intelligence, life, and resists. Anoint with Dirty Techniques.



When upgrading look for the following mods:

- Projectiles pierce an additional target
- Chaos DoT multi
- Non-chaos damage as extra chaos damage
- +1 Level to all Dexterity Skill Gems

Rings



For both slots you'll want Circle of Nostalgia with the mods increased chaos damage while affected by Herald of Agony and Herald of Agony has increased buff effect. These start at about 10c. You can get a variety of synthesis implicits, such as % increased life, % increased damage while leeching, % increased chaos damage, % increased damage with ailments, and so on.

Gloves



High evasion gloves with life, resists, attack speed, and accuracy.

If at all possible get gloves with the Curse enemies with Despair on hit corrupted implicit. If you don't have this you can link Hextouch and Despair to either your heralds or lightning golem. Or you can self cast, if that's your bag.



If you want you can get a Hands of the High Templar with Despair on Hit, Temporal Chains on hit, and other relevant implicits (+1 maximum frenzy charges, % increased attack speed, % increased life, relevant socket levels, etc). Note that Temporal Chains increases poison duration in addition to providing the defensive benefits, so it's an excellent curse for this build. If you get two curses on hit you should allocate Whispers of Doom, which is only 4-5 passives away.

Belt



A Stygian Vise with life, resists, and flask buffs. You can get an ilvl 86 Stygian Vise for 1c and Harvest reroll it with life or chaos (for resists) until you get something you're happy with.



When upgrading look for these two mods:

- % increased maximum life hunter prefix
- % increased chaos damage hunter prefix

Socketed into it, find an Abyss jewel with + life, flat physical or chaos damage, increased accuracy, and other marginal attack bonuses such as attack speed if you've dealt a critical strike recently. here's the filter I use on pathofexile.com/trade

Boots



Look for Life, Resists, and Movement Speed. Bench crafted +%20 movement speed, %12 to gain onslaught on kill is acceptable, and maybe even preferable, to a natural movement speed affix.

When upgrading, look for:

- Tailwind on crit
- Poison deals damage #% faster (helps with clear)
- Projectiles pierce # additional targets

You can craft these in Harvest by buying Hunter influenced Slink Boots as a base and rerolling speed, life, or chaos. You get decent boots surprisingly quickly this way.

Jewels

You'll want jewels with +% increased life, attack speed, attack speed while holding a shield, and chaos damage multi. here's the filter I use on pathofexile.com/trade.

If/when you switch to Malevolence you want a Watcher's Eye with the mod +# % to Damage Over Time Multiplier While Affected by Malevolence.

Large Cluster Jewel

You'll want an 8-passive jewel with 3 notables. There are four different types you can go with, all of which have roughly similar DPS stats. Take whichever type of jewel meets your preferences and budget. The three types are:

Physical damage

- Grim Oath
- Battle Hardened
- Master the fundamentals

Chaos damage

- Grim Oath
- Unwaveringly Evil
- Wicked Pall

Attack damage

- Feed the fury
- Martial Prowess
- Fuel the fight (if you have mana issues) or Devastator (improves clear)

Attack damage while holding a shield

- Feed the fury
- Martial prowess
- Fuel the fight (if you have mana issues) or Devastator (improves clear). If you're having survivability issues you can take Veteran Defender or Gladiator's Fortitude, but there is a tradeoff with DPS.

These cluster jewels start at about 75c. Here are two trade searches I use:

- Physical and chaos damage
- Attack damage

Medium Cluster Jewels

For the Medium Clusters you'll want 4 or 5 passive Chaos DoT jewels. The best notable to look for is Circling Oblivion. Wicked Pall, Steady Torment, and most of the other notables on this type of cluster jewel will work just fine.

Here's the pathofexile.com/trade search I use. As of right now they can be had for about 15c.

Flasks
Despite the flask nerfs, they're still incredibly important to the build.


Seething Divine Life Flask. Staunching the preferable suffix.


Jade flask. Heat is a good suffix.


Sin's Rebirth. Gives unholy might, which is a massive DPS boost.


Enduring Eternal Mana Flask. Warding is a good suffix


For your fifth flask slot you can flex. If you don't already have a consistent source of Onslaught (such as on your boots), get a Silver Flask with the increased attack speed ("of Acceleration") suffix.

Otherwise:
- If you want more defense, you can pick up a Quartz flask.
- If you want more offense, you can use a Sulphur flask with the increased attack speed ("of Acceleration") suffix, or (my preference) an Atziri's Promise (phys as extra chaos is massive amounts of damage).

Note that I prefer not to use a Quicksilver flask. Running speed is not super relevant to the overall speed of this build (attack speed for whirling blades is much more important), so in my opinion it's not worth the slot.

For the enchantments on the utility flasks it's up to you. I prefer Used when you Hit a Rare or Unique Enemy, if not already in effect as in higher-tier maps this basically means they're always on, and they're saved for when it's important. Plus, you never have to manually use your utility flasks, which makes maintaining Plague Bearer easier on your brain/fingers.

Why not Deadly Ailments?

While Awakened Deadly Ailments is more DPS (swap it in on PoB to see the difference), it feels/plays significantly worse. It would typically replace Awakened Added Chaos Damage. The loss of physical hit DPS in particular makes the leech benefit from Blood Rage almost disappear, which makes it much harder to stay alive in heated battles. And it just generally feels bad. I won't fault you for using Awakened Deadly Ailments, but personally I prefer not to.

That said, the hit reduction is valuable when fighting Atziri/Uber Atziri, so maybe keep one handy.

A note about Auras

You'll notice that I've been prioritizing the use of Herald of Purity over Malevolence. This is because the damage of Malevolence is only marginally better (~4%) than Herald of Purity, without the side benefit of the taunting sentinels. Malevolence only becomes worth it once you get the appropriate Watcher's Eye.

Once you can afford them, get a level 4 Enlighten, and then swap out anything you had supporting the heralds and put in Malevolence. At this point get a Watcher's Eye with the mod +# % to Damage Over Time Multiplier While Affected by Malevolence.

Going this route, however, is a 15-20ex investment, which is why I don't recommend it by default.

The 4-link is: Herald of Agony-Herald of Purity-Malevolence-Enlighten.



What, no wither totems?

Typically these types of builds use Wither linked with Spell Totem, Multiple Totems, and perhaps Faster Casting. This is used for bosses to quickly rack up wither stacks.

However, personally I find managing these totems to be a pain in the ass.

Luckily you can still get plenty of wither stacks by using Anomalous Withering Step linked with a level 3+ Enhance which allows for 9 wither stacks per use. Anomalous Herald of Agony can add a few more.