3.7 Rusty Poisonous Steel (Lancing Steel Pathfinder Poison build) 2.6 M shaper dps

Small update: lvl 3x right now and taking my time to explore stuff.
* volley doesn't support either of these skills, which is a huge letdown.
* pierce felt like ruining shattering steel, it made the skill hit nearby enemies once and continue in its way, then shatter later in empty space.
* without pierce, shattering steel did some good shutgunning for mobs right in front of my ranger, though it didn't reach full potential due to short range. If I use forced attack button to shot from afar, the 3 initial projectiles spread far away and most of them miss targets after shattering
* to fix this, I had to use point blank with shattering, which seemed counter productive
* things became better after 28 when I got Lancing steel and the pierce nodes from tree . It have better damage, faster animation, more projectiles, and easier control on projectiles spread. The only down side is reduced impaled, which isn't a big problem with the goal of this build.
* Virulence build up nicely with Lancing steel, even before getting to Pathfinder nor pump up posion chance. Crawler will be crazy at end game, that's for sure.
* I'm still not sure how much of my damage is from impale right now, but certainly it's still mainly physical.. the real test will happen when I start switching to ailment supports.
* I'm using war banner, because why not. It's merely 10% of mana for much accuracy and when dropped it debuff bosses. Gotta keep it for some time then decide about it later.
* the immortal syndicate is FUN. Really doing everything related when chance appear, and yes, this ranger can handle 3 of their captains together. Still early to judge, but life on hit , life on kill, and mana on hit from items making it comfortable adventure.
* the new crafting is super helpful while leveling, the syndicate gives nice bonuses you wouldn't get that early otherwise!
*Green melee movement gems isn't getting me across ledges. Should I use leap slam??

P.S : I'm using maim as 4th link, not bad actually

updating PoB link to new build adjustments soon?

"

DevelopersDevelopersDevelopers wrote:

updating PoB link to new build adjustments soon?

PoB doesn't have the items and skills updated to 3.5, I'm waiting for it to make a proper build.

If you asking about tree, nothing changed from planned tree. I'm at 44 and heading towards dirty technique. act 5 is a breath, things melt before they hit me. The range of Lancing steel can kill things off screen, even with slower projectiles.

I might post my gear/setup tonight

Edit: you can see my tree, items, and gems at my profile, I made it public

New skill gems are in, and I'm following your build, I'm up to 65 now. Having mixed feelings about it, and I deviated some just to get early move speed that I made regret out of.

Yeah, found it updating this evening with the new items and skills, which is good to start making formulas a bit more accurate.

I got a 5L chest piece from delve, and as it's energy/armour, the best I could get with the few chromatic I have is 2G2R1B. So did some testing in PoB and found best 5th gem to add is "Added Chaos damage" for both poison and direct projectile damage benefit greatly from it.



These are the best for me so far, because I have good phy weapons:



Also this nice headgear unveiled mod



Many of gems I have there are unlinked supports just to level them. I still need to find some item to put Wither+Spell Totem, and another 4L for Herald of agony. Though it's still doing great as is.

Couple of PoB changes, in light of volley not working with LS. Also the OP PoB had onslaught turned on, but didn't have the onslaught jewel in the tree.


notes for both:
skill gems not completely optimized Vicious projectiles is not optimal. Damage on Full life is a huge jump, but requires a bunch of strength. I don't feel very good about the use of Spreading Rot, nice for burst, as it isn't sustainable. Unless the boss dies before the hindrance wears off, it doesn't reflect the dps very well. I tried to change the tree without regard to the gear so it likely still has room for change there.


Variation, more leech, less regen, 4 jewel slots(flexibility/scaling/cost), less resists in tree, less accuracy - 840k dps / 479k Shaper dps, 5400 life - https://pastebin.com/7B1e8wA7

OP, more regen, less leech, 2 jewel slots, more resists, more accuracy - 837k dps/ 477k shaper dps, 5050 life - https://pastebin.com/p4jBQaS7

Some of my gear so far at 73:

"

DevelopersDevelopersDevelopers wrote:

Couple of PoB changes, in light of volley not working with LS. Also the OP PoB had onslaught turned on, but didn't have the onslaught jewel in the tree.


notes for both:
skill gems not completely optimized Vicious projectiles is not optimal. Damage on Full life is a huge jump, but requires a bunch of strength. I don't feel very good about the use of Spreading Rot, nice for burst, as it isn't sustainable. Unless the boss dies before the hindrance wears off, it doesn't reflect the dps very well. I tried to change the tree without regard to the gear so it likely still has room for change there.

Variation, more leech, less regen, 4 jewel slots(flexibility/scaling/cost), less resists in tree, less accuracy - 840k dps / 479k Shaper dps, 5400 life - https://pastebin.com/7B1e8wA7

OP, more regen, less leech, 2 jewel slots, more resists, more accuracy - 837k dps/ 477k shaper dps, 5050 life - https://pastebin.com/p4jBQaS7

You certainly caught the heart of the build and took it couple steps further. Shadow area certainly have some juicy nodes for Crit/DoT/AS , it's totally a viable option.

But notice that both PoB links still have spectral throw as main skill, and tweaks are maximized for Spectral throw. That's why your version gives more DPS. If you switch both to Lancing Steel, damage will come down to 705~715k range.

If we want to bring that up again to +800k, we need Witchfire Brew potion, for level 21 Despair. That way we don't need (Despair+Blasphemy), and can use extra unreserved mana for something else (If we have reserved mana reduction like your helmet).

Also, use Ahn's Might (if we can have the Str requierment of wooping 213) + Dreamfeather. I'm not 100% sure why this combination have even more DPS than dual wielding either of them in both slots, but they take the damage over 800k for Lancing Steel.

The safest chest piece would be Belly of the beast for greater HP, that's the standard my dps calc is based on. But Loreweave adds 50k More dps, and Dendrobate add 90k. While Cherrubim's Maleficence add something in-between.

"

Also the OP PoB had onslaught turned on, but didn't have the onslaught jewel in the tree.

Onslaught comes from the Abyssal socket in belt, but yeah, if we have more sockets in tree it will be much easier.

"

agony on 4(5) link in gloves eats up enough mana to prevent Purity from even turning on

* Perhaps switching it to 4L and turnning on Purity give you more dps for now. The flat phy is nice bonus for conversion, initial hits, and poison, from what I understand, it might give you like 7-8% increase in total damage, though I can't say if it justify the lose of Crawler dps. It's hard to calculate the exact dps, so it's up for debate. Though at the very end game with all posion stacking it become somewhat less significant.

* Other tip I failed to mention earlier about mana management is taking first point in Essence Sap wheel, named "Mana Leech" and giving 0.4% of attack damage leeched as mana, as well as 10% increase leech per second. It helps with the big attack speed this build can get.

For everyone following this build and still haven't hit high levels: Here's my level 57 PoB: https://pastebin.com/gBNyWFR9

It's - again - not optimal, Swapping Void manipulation instead of Maim is important at this point, and using second Innsbury in off hand would boost damage by a a mile, but I need some gem recoloring which is hard on this Blue/Red chest.

Act 7 is done, and Syndicate encounters are getting easier. Bosses can 1 hit me sometimes, because I neglected life in tree for so long.. Should rectify this soon.

Ah I missed the belt. Let me look into the 2 PoB links and see if I missed the skill switch, and update.

Ok, my bad, OP stats with LS, still not including the onslaught since it is only on kill and I'm mostly interested in single target/boss sustainted dps. Leaving in the hinder gem reluctantly -

OP, more regen, less leech, 2 jewel slots, more resists, more accuracy - 702k dps/ 400k shaper dps, 5057 life - https://pastebin.com/2rY9gTSd

A Variant I'm not following, just theory crafted - more leech, less regen, 4 sockets, 710k dps/405k shaper dps, 5414 life - https://pastebin.com/XQgyC87N

Hopefully I managed to get the comparisons more exacting this time. One thing I didn't notice before that I think is a big deal, 102% movement speed in variant, 85% in OP. I have mixed feelings about this experiment, but I'm happy to at least found something comparable. It took hours to find anything that even felt like it was worth discussing. Thank you for the idea, and hopefully this variant helps people choose or try Pathfinder LS. Thanks for the discussions in game @givemelight

I really hope PoB is incredibly wrong on dps.
Perhaps it isn't truly accounting for the projectiles?


it says Dual Strike, Double Strike, Dominating Blow, Tectonic Slam, Cyclone, and Frenzy (accounting for frenzy charges) would do far more dps with the same build than LS. Like double.

Lacerate is Comparable.

Cleave, Heavy strike are almost triple.

If nothing else, excellent build in the ability to try out so many different skills and still do lovely dps.