[3.9] Rangercosta's 4-Totem + Mirage Archer Toxic Rain (Deathless Uber Elder) - low/medium budget

Introduction

(Updated for 3.9 Metamorph League - V2.2)


Toxic rain is stronger than before, and this build is here to show you how.

I do not take credits for the idea, it is just a mixing up of all the best things PF and TR have to offer.

You can realistically expect a nice leveler for a low budget and an Uber Elder Killer with less than 10-12 exalts mid-league.





Note: Trickster version of build here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2665234

Videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T64hn0kCRQ (Pit of the Chimera)

https://youtu.be/ohIepy2H_w8 (Forge of the Phoenix)

https://youtu.be/v-kJ7ovy528 (Maze of the Minotaur)

https://youtu.be/_cu_BLvdREo (T16 - The Eradicator)

https://youtu.be/rBPlguF5Co0 (T16 - The Enslaver)

https://youtu.be/PCr5oaDl39s (Deathless Uber Elder)




Concept:

Using the skill Multiple Totems Support and Skirmish Quiver, you can get 4 totems shooting AND you bow attack plus Mirage Archer, all at the same time. The rest is just balancing attack speed, chaos damage and skill duration.
You can theoretically shoot more than 150 arrows per second with endgame gear (although usually much less than that), filling up a large portion of the screen with the spores

Why not use Herald of Agony?
HoA is increasingly better the more mana reservation it has. But even with a 6L, it cannot compare in terms of number of hits to the 4 totems for withering touch. Also, the spore duration allows an area to keep doing damage even if the enemy moves, because you create a floor mantle of spores around enemies. Also, while with HoA you have an autonomous source of damage besides your character, with the 4 totems you have 2 autonomous sources, which can be useful for things like Breach, and for keeping a constant flow of damage while you move around.

What about Caustic Arrow?
With this build, CA is useless agains bosses, very slow. It does give you better map clearspeed, even on T16 maps, because of the faster burst of damage it produces at start compared to TR...but you will have trouble killing syndicate members in maps. Also, survivability is decreased, since you don't leech almost any life (at least TR has many hits, so leeching while not great, still helps a bit).
Note: use it in bow if you want, never in totems...useless.


Pro's & Con's

Pro's

+ Very strong DPS for bosses
+ Ranged, so more survivability
+ Medium-high HP depending on options
+ Can do all map mods


Con's

- Not as tanky as other builds
- Totem playstyle not for everyone
- Can become difficult to see stuff in the map with so many spores!!



Gear

Quiver


Weapon


Helmet


Armour


Gloves


Boots


Craiceann Gear Option


Rings


Amulets


Belt


Flasks:



Jewels




Best mods for items (in order of importance)


Skill gems



Passive Tree (at level 98) - for Blood rage/Vitality Variant of the build (for Bane with 2 curses/Grace check Trickster version - link above)


Skill Tree: http://bit.ly/2Mzy7jL

Path of building: https://pastebin.com/44iPU3ys - Updated for 3.8


Bandits: Kill All

Ascendancy
Nature's Adrenaline - Nature's Bloom - Master Alchemist - Nature's Reprisal (in this order)

For more damage and less survivability, change from Master Alchemist to Master Toxicist (not recommended while leveling)

Pantheon: Soul of Lunaris & Soul of Rhyslatha
(For Uber Elder, I use soul of Ralakesh)


Game Playstyle

Cast your totems in front of your walking pattern, they will start shooting even before you see the enemies. While killing bosses, run around them:
Cast 1 pair of totems, run a bit, cast another pair, run a bit, shoot main weapon, run......repeat
Try to place your totems in a clear spot, not very near the enemies.

What about Blood rage, Despair, Golem, Enduring Cry, Blink arrow, etc?

Either place your four left hand fingers over the skill buttons (not the flasks) and spam click the flasks every 4 seconds or so or use a gaming mouse with lateral thumb buttons.
Personally I use Logitech G602 and it works great because of the 6 lateral buttons for the thumb.

Button setup (from most important to less important, thus from most accessible to less)

left mouse button - movement
right mouse button - weapon main attack (TR)
middle mouse button - despair/bane (for big mob groups or boss... despair has a huge duration with this build, so dont need to click often)

Most accessible key/thumb button - Totem TR
Second - Blink arrow (use only for emergencies, to escape stuff... cooldown is still long)
Third and fourth/fifth - Vaal Grace/Enduring Cry and Lightning golem (click both every once in a while, especially right before big mob groups for 3 endurance charges)

Less accessible key/button - Blood rage - basically you only need to click this at the start of the map

Note:put auras in second row of buttons, otherwise you will most likely misclick it and disable it during stressful situations

Changelog
1.0 First release
1.1 Switched to efficacy on both 6L, made minor changes to tree to accomodate for changes in a more balanced way.
1.2 New minor changes in tree and skill gems
1.3 Final tree, after some more testing
1.4 Updated for 3.6 League
1.5 Updated for 3.7 League
1.6 Updated for 3.8 league
1.7 New update for 3.8 league
1.8 Small update for 3.9 league

Gear For speed runs


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Reserved

Very nice guide!! And so different from other TR builds: you could really SATURATE the ground with toxic seed-pods.

I wonder how do you deal with survivability due to the visual "blindness"

Well, you can place the totems in an area an then run away from it to a clear space...you dont have to stand there, because the damage is done by itself :)

oh this is very interesting indeed. very easily adapted to many other ascendancies as well.

could be a good way to get solid damage but use a really tanky ascendancy, maybe to push delves or something.
could be really interesting to go all in insane damage with occultist too

Nice idea, I will probably try occultist next time!

i think this could work very well with raider as well - mostly im thinking for delve. mostly for the easy evasion cap and for ailment immunity

edit: actually i think im going to adapt to this build with my trickster. im doing caustic arrow right now, and it just sucks vs single target in comparison to something like this. i also want to push delves and CA won't be able to do it as well

toxic rain has a huge benefit of the slow and i honestly just really like the skill overall. much more than CA too.

i'll end up changing some things, like probably self casting wither instead of using it on totems, mostly for the hinder effect. be going MoM to try to be somewhat defensive i guess, but this basically means not having an aura or something.

interesting....
so essentially when i put my current build into PoB and change to toxic rain and do all the calculations....
my caustic arrow, maxed out etc will do about 900k shaper dps, which is quite large for DoT builds. but when i calculate toxic rain and toxic rain totems if i were to switch to something like this, i get a total of about 1,830,000 shaper dps ASSUMING half of the pods on the ground are actually doing damage and full 15 wither stacks.

thats a fucking hell of a difference there. especially if more than half the pods on the ground will be doing damage. i wonder what its realistically about...considering the aoe of the skill and aoe of each pod...its probably still about 50% ya think?

editedit: actually my damage will be way bigger than that. i forgot to factor in a few things, haha. fucking crazy. i gotta craft a bow for this.

I think it is more reallistic to think that about a 1/4 of the spores do DoT on a given target... still a lot a dmg :)

so....this is pretty funny. i was just messing around with pob a bit and if you did a trickster version and crafted like a BiS GGGGGGGGGG weapon and went POISON you can get upwards of 8mil dps on shaper.

but ya even just focusing the DoT you can get a couple mil without too much trouble. this is bonkers. lol

poison would be fun but the delay in damage would be insane. you already have a ramp up time in poison itself, but then you'd have to cast totems, have them attack enough times that TR is overlapping and ramping up, they apply the poison, then gotta wait for the poison to ramp up.

but anyway i think you got very innovative in your build here and im definitely going to rip it off and dominate the game with it. thanks dude!

here is the bow i crafted for my TR. i would have liked to get lvl 20 proj and elder atk spd/atk spd if killed recently but it was taking too many alterations.


once i level up my 7x caustic arrows and 7x empowers and corrupt them all i'll make a full shift over to TR

Remember that totems die easily so waiting too much time for damage to stack is not a good option...also, while enemies are not dying, they are killing you. That's why I opt for damage on full life instead of increased duration with GG gear, so I can start doing considerable damage right from the start. Good luck!