Caustic Arrow

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TheManWhoLaughs wrote:

I know this has been asked before, but I couldn´t find an answer.

Now that Projectile Damage increases the Dot of Poison Arrow´s cloud:

1. The +X% MORE Projectile Damage of the Projectile Weakness curse should affect the cloud damage. Is that correct?

2. Does the MORE damage of the Point Blank Keystone / Support Gem affect the cloud damage when a close target is hit?

Would really appreciate if someone has tested or knows for sure.

Thank you!

Wait for the patch 1.0.2b wath comming out this week the patch improves some areas of 1.0.2 and i am sure projectiles and area of affect will worked right afer patch.

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TheManWhoLaughs wrote:

I know this has been asked before, but I couldn´t find an answer.

Now that Projectile Damage increases the Dot of Poison Arrow´s cloud:

1. The +X% MORE Projectile Damage of the Projectile Weakness curse should affect the cloud damage. Is that correct?

2. Does the MORE damage of the Point Blank Keystone / Support Gem affect the cloud damage when a close target is hit?

Would really appreciate if someone has tested or knows for sure.

Thank you!

1. Currently the x% more projectile damage from projectile weakness curse does not effect the cloud damage but works currently with the arrow hit of PA.

2. The damage multipler of point blank appears to also have no impact on cloud damage but does appear to effect the arrow damage of poison arrow. This is tested with the point blank gem not keystone.

Would also like to confirm that despite what some have said in this thread that concentrated effect support gem does indeed work with cloud damage correctly but the tool tip as someone else stated is bugged and does not show an increase in damage. With testing you clearly see a large difference in cloud damage with concentrated effect support gem.

Update also on leveling with PA. My level 10 PA (character level 41) does 134 chaos damage per second, compared to 74.4 before patch 1.0.2.

I'm hoping GGG does not feel pressured by nay sayers to over buff PA and then have to over nerf it after it becomes way too powerful.

Poison Arrow isn't the strongest skill in the game but it has yet to show any signs of being weaker than it's previous version. Hopefully I can keep on going on in Nemesis and post again once in merciless.

Thank you all for your replies.

You are right: It makes sense and is absolutely correct that Point Blank is not affecting the DoT of PA because it´s labeled ATTACK.

However: Taken that projectile Damage nodes increase The DoT of PA, the +X% MORE Projectile Damage of Projectile Weakness should increase the DoT of PA. According to the new DoT changes it should work and it makes no sense and really sucks that it doesn´t work.

Also: Why is the tool tip dps with conc effect still not fixed after the hotfix patch?

Poison Arrow cloud is only stronger if you shoot it with a single shot and supports that help that single shot. If you try fork/lmp or any support that lessens damage early-game, the cloud is virtually useless which is why I stated it will be an end-game build when the supports level off damage wise.

Regardless, I'm glad there's some more discovering of what's working and what's not, guesswork is just that -- so time will tell I'm still not convinced one way or the other.

And I guess I just don't 'get' the concentrated area tooltip even after an explanation. Seems if you can get the fire area burning tooltip to show correctly in firetrap, you could get the poison area tooltip to show as well. Guess they are separate somehow but seem the same to me.

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Psomm wrote:

Poison Arrow cloud is only stronger if you shoot it with a single shot and supports that help that single shot. If you try fork/lmp or any support that lessens damage early-game, the cloud is virtually useless which is why I stated it will be an end-game build when the supports level off damage wise.

Regardless, I'm glad there's some more discovering of what's working and what's not, guesswork is just that -- so time will tell I'm still not convinced one way or the other.

And I guess I just don't 'get' the concentrated area tooltip even after an explanation. Seems if you can get the fire area burning tooltip to show correctly in firetrap, you could get the poison area tooltip to show as well. Guess they are separate somehow but seem the same to me.

Both the initial hit AND the ground burn are AoE and thus conc effect can correctly display a tool tip for fire trap. Poison arrow is a combination of a single target hit and an AoE and therefore conc effect can not correctly display a tool tip for the skill.

Edit: And while I did die just before able to go into merciless (damn Lunaris Temple) I had my PA doing over 300 chaos damage per second at level 54 and the arrow itself was doing 1.3k dps. PA ripped through rares and bosses alike.

Sadden to why Iron grip does not increase cloud damage but iron grip quality gem % projectile damage does increase cloud damage. Again, works on arrow hit but ignoring cloud. I can understand why point blank would not work but any explanation for iron grip?

I will definitely give another PA build a go with a reconsideration on what order to get damage nodes but other than Iron Grip not working I have no real complaint about the new version of the skill.

The cloud damage does not stack and before the patch LMP/GMP/Fork did not effect cloud damage, so was used to spread the dot around in a much larger area. It was a given that with the nerf of damage because of scaling and the patch stating that because the cloud now scales penalties would apply also, LMP would not be useful to the skill at all.

Lvl 25 poison arrow does 374.7 base degeneration. (+3 gem levels from bow, +2 from empower gem)

current increases from gems and passives can be:
137% projectile damage from passives
19% lvl 20 faster projectiles
27% lvl 20 slower projectiles
40% vulnerability curse (assuming it is additive at this point?)
= 223% increased damage, increases the degeneration damage to 1210.28

current potential "more" damage from passives and gems can be:
24% more damage from area damage passives
69% more damage from concentrated effect
= 93% more damage

If you take all the projectile nodes, all the area damage nodes, and use vulnerability curse, your theoretical best case degeneration per second goes up to 2335.8?ish before chaos resistance(if i have every thing in the right place).

Primary benefit would be that it is immune to reflection, and the most glaring fault would be it is impossible to leech mana or life through in it's current state.

Thank you very much for your reply Mark!

I think I understand now why Projectile Weakness doesn´t affect PA´s DoT cloud. Still saddens me though :-P I thought it could work the same way as Vulnerability (also a Damage taken modifier, but it is specifically for DoT, so I see the problem with Projectile Weakness).

[quote]I can understand why point blank would not work but any explanation for iron grip?[/quote]

Iron Grip doesn´t affect the cloud damage for similar reasons as Point Blank:

The increase to Physical Damage from Strength applies to Projectile Attacks as well as Melee Attacks

It´s specific damage (physical damage + also labeled attack) and only general or non-specific damage works on the cloud damage of PA (e.g.: +x% increased projectile damage ; +x% increased damage) In the next patch they will also add chaos damage passives which will also work on PA´s cloud (which GGG should have introduced together with the DoT changes :-( ).

I recommend linking PA to trap as it benefits of the damage multiplier and building a lot of trap damage. For instance the cheapest way to increase the dot damage.

PA/Trap/Inc AoE/Conc effect is a really good 4L.