Pathfinder ascendancy detailed feedback

20.12.2024 update After concoctions buffs I reconsider many of previously mentioned problems. Poison on "poison bow skills" are still bad. But Pconc is REALLY good. Poison scales very well with pconc. It also has better supports and heavy level scaling with widowhail. It is also benefits from inc chaos damage and wither. Really easy to sustain flasks now.

Hit based concotions are somewhat ok. Lightning damage has very strong nodes on a tree in ranger/shadow area + merc. Lightning is lucky + more lighntning is very strong. Also +1 all lightning ring is also good. Bad part lightning conc doesn't get damage from WED support or conc effect (pconc also doesn't) (is it a bug?). Also not good that you need to invest a lot of passives in pathing. And annoints for strong notables are crazy expensive. Wouldn't recommend as it plays worse than pcoc. But potentially if all problems with supports are fixed and high-end gear lightning concoction are probably one of the most damaging skills in a game.


About wither. After some time thinking my guess wither double dips with chaos based poison attacks. Needs confirmation but my thoughts behind that:
1) Wither doesn't work on hit from gas arrow as it is explicitly chaos.
2) Poison applied probably should benefit from wither as poison states that it is amplified by sources of increased damage and poison is still chaos.
3) As pconc is chaos damage based it should apply both to hit and dot base making it double dip.
Am I right? If so, either this will be fixed or pconc gutted again. Hope for the first option.


Speaking about gas arrow. Gas arrow could be good with sources of extra proj as it applies multiple poisons with each cloud. Having mirror tier phys bow +2 proj is probably even stronger than pcoc as it allows you to invest more in crit and better jewels instead of flask charges.
Without extra proj + very high dps Pconc is better tho.


I would prefer more PConc baseline until level 20 scaling and then diminishing return on levels but having added damage of ~200-300% would be actually cool way to scale damage. Extreme levels pconc are probably too high at this moment. And survavibility is bad. It would be cool to shot pconc with a shield in left hand.


Otherwise nothing changed. Other ascendancy nodes are still bad. Probably worth try to build hit based with running assault + new support gem for casual walk and shoot gameplay.


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Original post


No bashing here, I really enjoy many aspects of game especially fact that loot is more valuable now and bosses are really cool. Just my thoughts on flaws of pathfinder as an ascendancy. Some parts may feel sarcastic or even slightly rude but have in mind that I have no intent to offend developers or anyone involved.

I played pathfinder non-stop since start of EA. I'm 89 lvl now and played mainly poison from level 1 to this moment. Now I'm playing level stack vine arrow (despite 0 synergy with pathfinder) because it is just broken and will be nerfed soon probably.

TL;DR at bottom

1. Poison is bad. I mean not figuratively bad. It is bad bad.
Poison deals 20% of hit damage per second as a dot. Default max stack is 1. Can be increased up to 5 if I'm not missing something (+2 tree, +1 snakebite gloves, +1 support gem). Pathfinder have ascendancy node that doubles your max stack count. So max poison you can reach is 10. Thats 200% of hit damage per second.
So basically you doing 2 hits per second with poison if you can provide 100% uptime and whatever many attacks you can slip in Sounds good. But in reality poison notables that gives you +1 poison stack also gives you reduced poison duration. Support gem even better, it gives you less poison duration. Same as pathfinder ascendancy.
So after all increases we speaking of 0.45 multiplier to any poison duration you can reach. Now to the poison skills.

1.1 Poisonburst arrow. It has longer poisons (3 sec) and magnitude in quality (which isn't much, but ok). But it is a targeted projectile. And to apply stacks you need to hit constantly. You need a lot of attack speed to do it. It also needs pierce chance if you want to clear more than 1 mob at a time. Of course it has some aoe but it feels just worse than next skill in the list.
To sustain 10 poisons on a single target you need to hit 11 times in a window of single poison duration. So for poison duration of 5 seconds (gl achieving it) you need to hit faster than 2 times per second. Its not really hard. But only if you staying still whole fight. And good luck sustaining that mana costs with current leech. This skill feels bad on maps because of damage ramping and also bad on bosses because you need to constantly shoot, trying not to choke on all that mana flask sips and not to get hit buy some well telegraphed attack. Attack damage effectiveness of ~300% is nice but if you want to shoot thing go hit based deadeye. Believe me its better.

1.2 Gas arrow. I really enjoyed it. Aoe feels great. Really good synergy with bursting plague support. Poison pops feels great. Needs less mana to apply and uptime poison stacks on multiple groups. Attack effectiveness is on pair with poisonburst (even better). Very good at applying corrosion with support (but I'm not sure if armour break even works with poison?). Bad part is poisons only 2 seconds. (Tooltip shows same poison duration with poisonburst, is it a bug?) Quality is practically useless (aoe which is already big). Also bad part that it has constant poison applying speed. So no attack speed for scaling.
Skill feels like old caustic arrow and pretty good at clearing screens but awful at close combat and single target.

1.3 Toxic growth. Could be da MVP of poison only if not a liiitle flaw. It has +0.7 seconds to attack time. When you use it you literally jump for a second opening yourself for kicks to the head. Only use for this skill is to occasionally slip one when boss having a chill between his well telegraphed attacks. Even with crazy attack speed of 3.5 attacks per second it feels like an invitation to slam your head to the ground. It's virtually impossible to use in a pack of enemies. And the best part of it, that you have to "poison" it so bulbs will explode and actually do something. Skill for additional dps on a boss and nothing more.

1.4 Worst part of poison skills is a lack of supports. Basically you can go all in 1 skill and rest will literally have 0 useful supports. Ok maybe you can find 1 but thats it. Example: main skill - deadly poison - comorbidity (yikes no poison duration) - bursting plague (aoe clear speed) - heft (uncoditional ~15-20% more damage) - corrosion (it works yes?). Second skill - long range + close combat (count as one +30% more damage) - that's it. Swift affliction doesn't work. Chaos mastery is kinda meh. Chaos influence actually reduces our dps as we scale PHYS damage (did I forgot to mention that scaling chaos damage on tree does nothing?). Withering touch is cool but pain in the ass to hit with 2 skills at the same time trying to uptime poison and wither (just slot it to rain of arrows with chaos infusion and use your 4th skill on bosses).

1.5 Vine arrow. Vine arrow is good. Just shoot at boss, gas arrow and enjoy free dps. Or scale gem levels, unspec all poison nodes, socket it with literally 0 dps supports and one shot everything if it wasn't nerfed yet.

1.6 Plague bearer. Really cool spirit buff with good synergy with gas arrow. Has good scaling with quality and levels. Allows you to apply STRONG poisons and believe me they are strong. Spam it as soon as it available. Only bad part is weird long animation which sometimes leads you to inevitable.

1.7 Herald of plague wheeze more about it in an ascendancy part of this paper.

1.8 PConc also in ascendancy part.

Other skills are not mentioned because either they are plain bad, clunky to use with poison (hello tornado shot) or forces you to use plaguebearer just to cosplay deadeye builds with extra steps.

2. Ascendancy is weird and almost bad. Definitely not the worst (or is it?) ascendancy. Ok probably bugged ones (caster infernalist, chauyla) are worse at this moment (if they not fixed yet when you read it). Let us step by step verify why ALL nodes and see if they are worth point spent on them.

2.1 Contagion contamination. It spreads most damaging poison on enemies around 1.5 meters. You know who else does it? Your 30 spirit herald of plague boy. But for some reason he does it better (more range, hinder). Who tf will USE HERALD OF PLAGUE if there are actually 0 synergy of poison with other ascendancies. And only ascendancy now which operates with poison have no use of it? Even worse, you required to take it if you want the next node.

2.2 Overwhelming Toxicity is what this rant filled with. Doubles max poison stacks but with 35% less poison duration penalty. Mandatory for poison (100% more damage if you can bypass uptime cost, duh). No questions here. Good node if not couple of small ifs which we will meet later.

2.3 Traveler's wisdom. Free 6 passive points. Nothing to complain about. Probably second best of nodes because of reasons that will be stated later.

2.4 Running assault + relentless pursuit. Won't comment on that. Whoever pitched and implemented those should play with 4 ascendancy nodes total on any character. Probably would be good in future with cyclone or any other slowing yourself skill if we cook way to move faster than 140% of base movespeed. At this moment useless (correct me if I'm wrong).

2.5 Connected chemistry good node. Gives you almost unlimited flasks. I would rate it best node on PF because of utility it provides. Except for small detail that will be stated later.

2.6 Enduring elixirs conceptually cool. In reality bad. Reason 1) Insta flasks exists and works probably better in this reality. 2) Utility belt exists and despite some synergy with this node, having this belt makes this node feel useless. 3) It was good in poe 1 because of petrified blood. You could use it in on full hp to prepot damage spike. In poe 2 you can't. It won't save you from one shot. Yes glorified full hp regen per second is good but why would you need it if you have almost unlimited flask charges with alchemist boon and connected chemistry (since you must take it to travel to this node).

2.7 Now the fun part. Concoctions.
2.7.1 PConc - bad. In a bad way bad. It has flat base damage and no scaling of base damage of weapons. It scales good with levels but by my calculations to meet same numbers as poisonburst with decent 100 exalts bow you need to have ~30-31 levels of PConc. Yes they shotgun but currently only way to shotgun is to socket scattershot and lose 20% of hit damage and 20% of attack speed. Yes it has 100% more poison magnitude but it still less than poisonburst level 19 with decent bow. Yes it has good quality of faster ailments but you can't apply quality at this moment to pconc (bug?). Yes you can use it with shield and accumulate huge eHP by having block + acrobatics but you can't use shield with widowhail so no levels to scale damage. Also for some reason (bug?) scales with quiver affix "increased damage with bow skills". So currently widowhail makes it somewhat decent dps vice. But if it is a bug only level scaling part is left which is not much. Good parts it has better somewhat better supports and free 6 link on level 90. Yes it scales good with attack speed. But you know what else scales with attack speed? Flask charges that it consumes. Yes skill consume 5 mana flask charges on use. Imagine having 3 attacks per second and somewhat close to 3 charges per second. Do the math. And no, reduced flask charges used does not reduce flask charges consume by conc. B-but pathfinder gains 50% more charges from node.
Yes to bypass 15 charges per sec you need to refill 10 charges without that node. It it possible? No.

2.7.2 other concoctions - lightning could be good probably if not flask charges requirement. Now they all are bad go play deadeye bow and shoot things or warbringer totems. Same vibe better everything.

2.8 Returning to the "later" points of this rant. Pathfinder as game states is a flask and poison specialist. But poison is not in a good state. Contagious contamination (cough bad herald of plague) is preceding actual useful node for poison. Which have it downsides. Why? Is poison that good it need less duration on only (!) node that actually gives you damage?

Also PConc situation is pretty sketchy. If you want to actually poison with it, you need poison node. That makes 6 ascendancy points. What left? Charges gained (if they would actually sustain your attacks). It basically forces you to use 4 nodes with no variation. And if you playing hit based other concoction you basically have conc + connected chemistry and 2 nodes that gives you close to nothing. Good thing travellers wisdom is free 6 passives which is something. Probably running assault would be good if it would make you walk same speed as without attacking.

My point is pathfinder forces you to use "templated build". Want poison? You will take poison nodes and 2 other "useful" nodes like charges gained, passive skills or running assault. Want to play hit based? Same thing but with useless nodes. Want to play concoction? Well you can't sustain flasks play deadeye instead.

3. General impression. My friends are laughing at me since day 0. zdps and pathfinder kekw are the only things I heard from them when I showcased my build and bossfight. The only good thing about poison is poison pops. They feel may be even TOO strong. But only because everything else feels weak.
Only good thing about pathfinder that she is a twin sister of favorite child. Evasion based defense is good. Acrobatics is good. Bow is good. Flask charges gain is also good (general, not just PF). That's it. All of it deadeye do better (except for flasks, they are almost same). I had fun playing poison. But why should I continue if I can slap some +levels and melt everything even better with vine arrow. I don't know how I will play poison again when vines will get nerfed (and they will).


4. My propositions. You can scroll to TL;DR if you don't want to read my fan fiction about making pathfinder good.

4.1 Buff poison. Why deadeye with grey bow and MORE investment in defenses (deadeye doesn't need poison nodes, but for some reason PF needs to scale hit with proj and general damage) have more dps with at least 3 skills (LA + rod, salvo, detonating gas)? Why I must compete for weapon slot with most meta ascendancy that can benefit 10 times more from it?

4.2 Buff ascendancy nodes.
Contagion Contamination - idk more poison damage or inflict wither on hit or spread in a larger aoe or make enemies killed by poison to explode or delete herald of plague ffs. Or even better delete contagion contamination and save us points.

Overwhelming toxicity - remove duration penalty its dumb. You can't have inifnite amount of poisons for it to be meaningful. 10 is max and already hard to achieve high uptime.

Traveller's wisdom - let it stay it just boring but ok and could be used probably for now.

Running Assault - make assault to IGNORE movement speed penalty, it actually would give PF some character and uniqueness. Or maybe 70% less penalty idk but it just bad. Did you tried it? Its bad.

Relentless pursuit - give poe 1 juggernaut threat. Stun immunity + slow immunity and then it probably will be worth it (will it?). Or maybe better make slows INVERTED huh? Probably too op but considering it only works if you applied with slows it is actually a good node. Or maybe just rework it completely, no one will be sad. These 2 nodes are just missing 2 nodes on a tree they don't exist.

Enduring Elixirs - make us be able to use it ON max life. Or add same things on node to apply to MANA flasks. It probably still be bad. 2k hp is really easy to top up with insta flask there is no need to offset damage with constant regen because no petrified blood.

Connected chemistry - what bad can happen if it gives you not just 50% more charges gained but say 200%? It won't save you from one shots. Yes it will give you opportunity to heal A LOT but it is already there with all those flat flask charges gained and increases. But this change actually would make PConc usable. Or give some actual utility. Maybe change elixirs and chemistry places and replace node with "concoction-like" ascendancy point that let you chose between flask. And then that flask replaces default one with some useful utility like quicksilver + life idk. But really do the math. You can sustain any flask in the world just with general sources and CAN'T sustain mana flasks for concoctions.

Concoctions - either give more charges with other nodes (bad route, creates hard coupling with other nodes on ascendancy tree) or make it use LESS CHARGES PER HIT. Maybe 2.5 per attack or even 1.5 per proj or something like that. But please please please it's impossible to play such a cool skill with current costs. Also buff damage, add additional projectiles with levels or quality, in current state it is awful and what worse, it is unusable because of costs.
I'm fine if "increased damage with bow skills" working on conc will get nerfed IF it gets more base damage and less 20+ levels scaling. Add damage effectiveness so it could be scaled with rings or something. I mean, add ways to scale damage besides scaling enormous amounts of levels its boring.
Also one thing came to my mind. If it is available just after first ascension how level 20 character supposed to use it? Was it even playtested?


I think that's it. I spent almost 400k gold on rerolls to write this. Also I bought overpriced gear that will be nerfed soon just to feel what it is to play "strong" build. I don't ask same level of damage as vine arrow with levels. But having 20-30 times less dps with bow that would cost me ~900 exalts than with overpriced 270% widowhaill and couple of gear that worth 150 exalts total makes me really sad.

TL;DR Poison is weak. It consumes more passives than hit and still performs worse. Poison skills are very average at best. Pathfinder ascendancy is just plain weak and boring. Concoctions are dead atm because of flask charge requirements and low damage. Go play deadeye.

Very relatalbe, had to sell my dad's VHS player to respec into mag salvo deadeye

Just started paying ranger wanted to do poisons and saw that busting two different poison skills is kinda counterproductive. But I see it's much more complicated and makes stacking a problem ...

My first thought was that comborbitiy could give:
- This skills poison last X% shorter
- This skills poison can be aplied two times, or as an additional time for poison of a different source.

This won't resolve all you had writen, and I'm far from being able to sort this out.

Thank you, having played till t10 3/4 Ascendancy, I have a lot of the same criticisms.

I have startet foregoing sources of +1 to poisons because I cannot really sustain them for multiple reasons. The damage loss from scattershot (not only the 20% but also the slot, that u could use for heft or sth different) is just too much to be worth it. And since Gas Arrow costs roundabout 1/3 to 1/2 of my mana I am cosntantly chugging mana flasks, which i can sustain thanks to nodes on the skill tree and in ascendancy.
The gameplay is just not very nice like that. "Gas arrow, mana flask, 2x gas arrow, mana flask" is just a really ridicoulus roation. Speccing into mana regen, reduced mana cost and Int however costs so much damage, it slows kill speed to a halt.

Also getting Int is also not really viable. Dex itself offers very little benefit´, with it only buffing accuracy which is hilariously overcapped with the skill and eva gear requirements of 200+ dex. We are starved for HP as an evasion build and need any str. we can get. This meany nearly no Int, thus no mana, bad accessablity to curses/wither and other synergies with chaos damage, offerings etc.

This basically leads me to play posion as a one button build or two buttons if you count the mana flask (+vines for bosses). I don't have the mana to do anything else or the stats to even consider it. Also to just keep all my poison up, leaves me with very little time to even use other skills, even if i could cast or sustain them.

I can clear t10 and i I thinkt with a few levels, gear upgrades etc. I can push t15. However Poison Ranger, at this point just feels very one-dimmensional.

"

Shubidu#0412 wrote:

Thank you, having played till t10 3/4 Ascendancy, I have a lot of the same criticisms.

I have startet foregoing sources of +1 to poisons because I cannot really sustain them for multiple reasons. The damage loss from scattershot (not only the 20% but also the slot, that u could use for heft or sth different) is just too much to be worth it. And since Gas Arrow costs roundabout 1/3 to 1/2 of my mana I am cosntantly chugging mana flasks, which i can sustain thanks to nodes on the skill tree and in ascendancy.
The gameplay is just not very nice like that. "Gas arrow, mana flask, 2x gas arrow, mana flask" is just a really ridicoulus roation. Speccing into mana regen, reduced mana cost and Int however costs so much damage, it slows kill speed to a halt.

Also getting Int is also not really viable. Dex itself offers very little benefit´, with it only buffing accuracy which is hilariously overcapped with the skill and eva gear requirements of 200+ dex. We are starved for HP as an evasion build and need any str. we can get. This meany nearly no Int, thus no mana, bad accessablity to curses/wither and other synergies with chaos damage, offerings etc.

This basically leads me to play posion as a one button build or two buttons if you count the mana flask (+vines for bosses). I don't have the mana to do anything else or the stats to even consider it. Also to just keep all my poison up, leaves me with very little time to even use other skills, even if i could cast or sustain them.

I can clear t10 and i I thinkt with a few levels, gear upgrades etc. I can push t15. However Poison Ranger, at this point just feels very one-dimmensional.

I suggest if you having a struggle and continue to play PF to spec onto vine arrows stack or lightning road + plaguebearer. Both cases are better. First because of how even budget gears gets you same dps but one button style gameplay and frees more passives to invest in QoL or defenses. Later is better because of ability to stack more ele damage on tree + better clear with herald.

"

Bakubylozajete#1182 wrote:

Just started paying ranger wanted to do poisons and saw that busting two different poison skills is kinda counterproductive. But I see it's much more complicated and makes stacking a problem ...

My first thought was that comborbitiy could give:
- This skills poison last X% shorter
- This skills poison can be aplied two times, or as an additional time for poison of a different source.

This won't resolve all you had writen, and I'm far from being able to sort this out.

In my post I forgot to mention what struggle I encountered in campaign acts. At some points my bow was a bit weak for locations. And because of nature of poison I couldn't kill any bosses. So I got lucky with 5 link drop, sold it and acquired decent bow that helped me to progress through acts. And if you playing since act 1 on ssf poison build there is no way to get big powerspike because you need 2 ascensions for your poisons to do actual damage. But to achieve ascension you need good dps.

Thanks for the indepth feedback and I agree with most of it.

I'm playing Pconc PF myself since launch, but I'm not as far in progress as u've been. Only lvl 78 and T8 maps so far.

Some things u didn't mention or didn't get right tho.

#1 Vine Arrow is really really good together with PConc, since I believe u can poison Vine Arrow multiple times aswell, u just shoot one into the group of enemies and stack up poisons on them + the vines at the same time. Most of the time I don't even need to pconc mobs that come after, they just burn down from the vines.

#2 Reduced Flask Charges used works with Pconc. It's not shown in the tooltip, but at ~20% it will only consume 4 charges instead of 5.

#3 The tradeoff for not using Herald of the Plague is getting to use Withering Presence (I think it's called). U need some int to make it work, but with 83 int u can already use a lvl 10 gem. Higher gem levels only lessen the interval for the stacking.


Like I said, I've not experienced high maps yet, but I believe it can be viable with good gear and maybe some poison duration from jewels or uniques. Right now it's easy to sustain my 8 stacks on trashgroups. Single target I gotta fire almost all the time to keep it up, which is obviously not good.


One additional problem I have with PF tho is the survivability. We basically only have Evasion and that's it. Our lifepool is minimal and it's so easy so miss some telegraphed attack when u're already dodging 3 of those at the same time. I hope there's some uniques that fit us well, like Lightning Coil, but so far I feel very squishy.

+1

I totally agree with the OP, I'm not in late game yet, just act 3 with a SSF pathfinder full poison ranger and compared to deadeye or even other classes she seems really weak.
You have to invest a lot of passive to get a lousy amount of damage and you have to give up a lot of defensive nodes that are useful.

I agree also about the lacking of supporting skills and the fact that contagion contamination and spirit of herald are basically the same. Why should I invest in two different sources that do the same thing inefficiently?

I hope GGG will rework some aspects of the pathfinder and will give an improve to the poison mechanics.
I really like to play this PG but I'm struggling in vain to proceed in the campaign and at some point it's not fun anymore.

"

sox1985#6354 wrote:

+1

I totally agree with the OP, I'm not in late game yet, just act 3 with a SSF pathfinder full poison ranger and compared to deadeye or even other classes she seems really weak.
You have to invest a lot of passive to get a lousy amount of damage and you have to give up a lot of defensive nodes that are useful.

I agree also about the lacking of supporting skills and the fact that contagion contamination and spirit of herald are basically the same. Why should I invest in two different sources that do the same thing inefficiently?

I hope GGG will rework some aspects of the pathfinder and will give an improve to the poison mechanics.
I really like to play this PG but I'm struggling in vain to proceed in the campaign and at some point it's not fun anymore.

I'm playing SSF aswell, even tho I'm in trade league I haven't traded yet.

What helped me during the later campaign was using PConc whenever I didn't get a proper bow upgrade. Usually I was swapping back and forth between Pconc and poisonburst arrow, whenever I got a bow upgrade.

The first Poison Ascendency doesn't add anything for the class anyway.

U can also simply use a +x to projectile gems bow in weapon swap for PConc.

"

Sadaukar#2191 wrote:

Thanks for the indepth feedback and I agree with most of it.

I'm playing Pconc PF myself since launch, but I'm not as far in progress as u've been. Only lvl 78 and T8 maps so far.

Some things u didn't mention or didn't get right tho.

#1 Vine Arrow is really really good together with PConc, since I believe u can poison Vine Arrow multiple times aswell, u just shoot one into the group of enemies and stack up poisons on them + the vines at the same time. Most of the time I don't even need to pconc mobs that come after, they just burn down from the vines.

#2 Reduced Flask Charges used works with Pconc. It's not shown in the tooltip, but at ~20% it will only consume 4 charges instead of 5.

#3 The tradeoff for not using Herald of the Plague is getting to use Withering Presence (I think it's called). U need some int to make it work, but with 83 int u can already use a lvl 10 gem. Higher gem levels only lessen the interval for the stacking.


Like I said, I've not experienced high maps yet, but I believe it can be viable with good gear and maybe some poison duration from jewels or uniques. Right now it's easy to sustain my 8 stacks on trashgroups. Single target I gotta fire almost all the time to keep it up, which is obviously not good.


One additional problem I have with PF tho is the survivability. We basically only have Evasion and that's it. Our lifepool is minimal and it's so easy so miss some telegraphed attack when u're already dodging 3 of those at the same time. I hope there's some uniques that fit us well, like Lightning Coil, but so far I feel very squishy.

Thank you for your feedback. Are you playing with acrobatics? Because it helps a lot if you can get yourself high evasion chest.

Allow me to share insights on your points.

Agree on vine arrow, didn't mentioned properly that it is good and absolutely mandatory for dps increase. Bad part that it forces you to use bow. And if you go shield route you left only with pconc. It is fair trade-off for survivability but the fact it also leaves you short on +level to gems makes bow far superior option for pconc that is already not that great compared to current vine arrow level scaling.

Reduced flask charges used only works from tree. Flask mode have no effect on how many charges you use. And 4 flask charges is still a lot more to be able to handle in endgame with 3 attacks per second. Even 1 APS will face some downtime if you don't invest heavily in mana flask charges gain per second (0.25 x 2 unique rings + 0.2 from tree + 0.25 on flask + 0.28 alchemis's boon + 0.17 belt = 1.4 if i'm not missing addition sources). 1.4 * 1.5 from ascendancy = 2.1. That leaves you with missing 90% of flask charges gain increase. It is probably reachable. But we speak about 1 attack per second. Also It requires you to heavily invest in flask charges gained which makes you to drop poison scaling (which is already not great) or defense. You can achieve poison cap with scattershot but all those manipulations with your build seems pointless to me if I can get a decent bow and do more damage doing same thing but with other skill.

I am using alchemist's boon + plague bearer + wind dancer. That leaves me with 10 spirit left. 20 spirit is not much to get. Even if it's not possible you always can drop plague bearer as it is somewhat clunky to use. About withering presence I agree, good buff, but honestly I would prefer it to be on ascendancy tree instead of herald of plague as it requires too much int on high levels and 2 stack of wither is not much.

Speaking of high tier maps and good gear I kinda agree that you can invest a lot in poisons to make them fill somewhat decent. But it cant be compared to regular run and shoot projectiles build that has no ramping at all.