[3.4][Guide]Caustic Arrow Initital Hit/Chaos explosion

With the recent changes to Caustic Arrow in 3.4 it has become much stronger and can also be run in differnt ways, most people have been going with the dot route, but this is another route, that works just as well and plays faster.

This Caustic Arrow build is focused around the initial hit and explosion, while the dot still does great damage in combination with bleed and poison.

Tree:

www.poeurl.com/b4EJ

Ascendency:

We take Deadeye here, we will get 80% chance to bleed and against bleeding targets we'll get 80% crit chance and 40% crit multiplier.
We also get a 100% chance to pierce with another 100% crit chance.

Gem Links



Gear:

Current Gear:



Flasks:



Gear to look for:



Crafting:

To make the helmet with "Nearby Enemies have -9 chaos resistance" you need:

Potent Chaotic Resonator
Aberrant Fossil (More chaos mods)
Pristine Fossil (More life mods)

Roll a good base helm a few times and you'll get a decent one rather easily.

Videos:

I've uploaded a quick video to show some simple gameplay, it's only of a tier 10 map: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwurQUTaqPM

This is with the maim setup, the other setup, with Inc Aoe and Conc effect is better, but I do not currenly have the gear(intelligence) to run that (Friend does).

If I can find the time tomorrow i'll upload gameplay of a t15/t16 map and perhaps some bosses.

reserved

this is exactly what i wanted my league starter to be, but i will say that leveling up while focusing the DoT is much faster and easier. its less mana, more damage, and a lot easier to gear for (any dot is since it has its own base damage and not dependent on a good weapon).

however, i scraped the char relatively quickly. toxic rain just does it much better and easier than caustic arrow explosions. toxic rain hits when you shoot it, and when the pods explode - and the aoe of the explosions is actually very large even without any modifications to it. much more than caustic arrow.

i think you could basically do the exact same thing but with toxic rain and come out miles ahead. you also get the benefit of its slow. the only thing that is a negative is its duration, which of course is somewhat offset because of its slow

otherwise i commend you for doing this and making it work well. the damage can be very high.
since i kept my char focusing on the DoT, im really thinking of making a new one focusing the hit again (but again using TR over CA). either way, its essentially the exact same build. but im not sure TR can consider to "pierce", so that would be one negative, in way of deadeye anyway.

be epic if you could get a vid or two. clear speed and boss dps examples. would like to see how it looks with such gear.

"

xMustard wrote:

this is exactly what i wanted my league starter to be, but i will say that leveling up while focusing the DoT is much faster and easier. its less mana, more damage, and a lot easier to gear for (any dot is since it has its own base damage and not dependent on a good weapon).

however, i scraped the char relatively quickly. toxic rain just does it much better and easier than caustic arrow explosions. toxic rain hits when you shoot it, and when the pods explode - and the aoe of the explosions is actually very large even without any modifications to it. much more than caustic arrow.

i think you could basically do the exact same thing but with toxic rain and come out miles ahead. you also get the benefit of its slow. the only thing that is a negative is its duration, which of course is somewhat offset because of its slow

otherwise i commend you for doing this and making it work well. the damage can be very high.
since i kept my char focusing on the DoT, im really thinking of making a new one focusing the hit again (but again using TR over CA). either way, its essentially the exact same build. but im not sure TR can consider to "pierce", so that would be one negative, in way of deadeye anyway.

be epic if you could get a vid or two. clear speed and boss dps examples. would like to see how it looks with such gear.

Thank you for your comment, I have tried toxic rain, but it doesn't fit my play style and also didn't really work with my current setup. I'm not sure if it would be better as I haven't done my research on that.

I've uploaded a quick video to show some simple gameplay, it's only of a tier 10 map: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwurQUTaqPM

This is with the maim setup, the other setup, with Inc Aoe and Conc effect is better, but I do not currenly have the gear(intelligence) to run that (Friend does).

If I can find the time tomorrow i'll upload gameplay of a t15/t16 map and perhaps some bosses.

oh nice!
damage looks very good. even with maim as a 6th link. damn.

thats badass dude, good job

This build is actually really cheap to start with, but still scales into very high-end. Getting Chil Sol + Drillneck + Starkonja's is all you need and even from there you can start without them.

Levelin with basically any bow -> Death's Harp -> Infractem -> Chin Sol is really easy path for leveling.

"

xMustard wrote:

this is exactly what i wanted my league starter to be, but i will say that leveling up while focusing the DoT is much faster and easier. its less mana, more damage, and a lot easier to gear for (any dot is since it has its own base damage and not dependent on a good weapon).

however, i scraped the char relatively quickly. toxic rain just does it much better and easier than caustic arrow explosions. toxic rain hits when you shoot it, and when the pods explode - and the aoe of the explosions is actually very large even without any modifications to it. much more than caustic arrow.

i think you could basically do the exact same thing but with toxic rain and come out miles ahead. you also get the benefit of its slow. the only thing that is a negative is its duration, which of course is somewhat offset because of its slow

otherwise i commend you for doing this and making it work well. the damage can be very high.
since i kept my char focusing on the DoT, im really thinking of making a new one focusing the hit again (but again using TR over CA). either way, its essentially the exact same build. but im not sure TR can consider to "pierce", so that would be one negative, in way of deadeye anyway.

be epic if you could get a vid or two. clear speed and boss dps examples. would like to see how it looks with such gear.

What comes to this, I tried Toxic Rain early on, but the dps didn't feel as great as Caustic Arrow.
Also comparing these 2 skills feels like previously comparing Tornado Shot to Blast Rain, from these 2 I always prefered TS for my playstyle.

do you mean in initial hit stuff?

i think i may need to make a char and try this out again and compare the two. caustic arrow does seem great, and the aoe boost from pathfinder would really make it amazing, but toxic rain just seems like it would hit way more often and stuff. like a chaos explosion arrow
plus the base aoe on toxic rain pod explosions is insanely large.

also with toxic rain you wouldn't need to use gmp/lmp/volley or whatever, where as with caustic arrow you do in order to get overlapping aoe

only thing is a build like this is really going to suffer defensively, eventually.

What did you chose in the Bandit quest?

"

sullon79 wrote:

What did you chose in the Bandit quest?

I choose the 2 skill points.

Interesting Build, i'll give it a shot.

On which lvls do i need to use the cwdt setups?