[3.25] Scourge Arrow Poison Prolif Pathfinder - Fast, tanky, fun to play

For the record, I spent my first month on my league starter buying/crafting gear for this build.

I'm going to show people what's up with a wonderful take on the character.

My only gripe with it so far is that it's so difficult to find a source of life gained on hit. Odds are, a three affix watcher's with the vitality mod would cost an arm and leg.

i have a question, does the watchers eye need to have "#% of Physical Damage from Hits taken as Cold Damage while affected by Purity of Elements" or you can change it for the fire/lightning version? i mean we have all the elemental res caped at 90 so it has to be the same, im asking because there aren't any good watcher eye with the two cold version that is relatively cheap

"

xxarakanoxx wrote:

i have a question, does the watchers eye need to have "#% of Physical Damage from Hits taken as Cold Damage while affected by Purity of Elements" or you can change it for the fire/lightning version? i mean we have all the elemental res caped at 90 so it has to be the same, im asking because there aren't any good watcher eye with the two cold version that is relatively cheap

If you plan on using "X% of cold damage recouped as life", then it matters.

If you don't, then it shouldn't.

Okay I have a burning question here:

If I want to use mirage archer for my wither setup WolfieNA style, what do I replace it with in the main links?

Deadly Ailments basically blows away any leech, which is a big problem.

Cruelty is worthless vs. bosses (doesn't remove enough life per hit)
Swift Affliction is basically a 33% damage loss vs. bosses since it's 25% less ailment duration.
Vile Toxins barely scales the poison at all.
Slower projectiles is only a 19% more damage multiplier.
Vicious Projectiles is a brutal 10% less attack speed penalty.
Increased Duration just seems incorrect as far as a main link skill goes, because you want to kill trash quickly.

What am I missing here?

"

IlyaK1986 wrote:

Swift Affliction is basically a 33% damage loss vs. bosses since it's 25% less ailment duration.

SA is -25% duration but + 39% more Damage over time.

If you deal a poison of 100 dmg over 10 seconds ~ 10dps.
With SA you go down to:
75 dmg over 7.5 seconds, but increase it by 39% again so:

104.25 dmg over 7.5 seconds ~13.9 dps.

That is ignoring the quality of +10% increased dot dmg.

SA is a silent sleeper, because bosses have invincible phases, where a long dot does not deal the full dmg.

Look at it this way, if sirus is about to phase in exactly 5 seconds.
The first dot deals 50 dmg the second deals 69,5.

In general stacking poison duration seems like the best increase in damage and most of the time it is. But some bosses ignore your long poisons and drasticly reduce your dps.
Thats why poison is in the unique position that stacking poison duration and increasing the speed at which it applies is viable. (SA does not increase the speed at which it applies to be clear).

Well okay, so...

Got my character up and running and uh...

Yeahhh, this feels REALLY smooth.

I'm still a bit puzzled as to how to best maximize single target damage. The gear in general isn't super-expensive aside from the quiver base, and I bought a CI impossible escape to screw around with (apparently ATROPHY is in range!). Bought an intimidate + 2x 5% DD lethal pride as well.

The malevolence setup feels a bit clunky because I am just not used to standing still waiting for it to cast.

Not sure where to get onslaught from unless I break the bank to try and craft an onslaught on hit ring with despair on hit (50/50 to transfer from a delve ring, not willing to risk that).

Compared to lightning strike, the build is SUUUUUUUPER smooth, and I'm a lot less fearful that I'll get absolutely blown up.

However, I am feeling the lack of a burst bossing skill like a VLS.

Any suggestions for how I can improve the build's bossing would be appreciated :D

Edit:

Is there any flesh/flame combination this build wants?

Here's my thinking:

Channeling build not spammy build, which means gathering winds (tailwind) doesn't stack up as quickly as say, a rapid-fire tornado shot build.

Focal point doesn't really do too much because none of the marks help poison. Poacher's mark might help a little bit, but nowhere near as much as say, sniper's mark helps an omnishot or ass mark helps lightning strike.

Endless Munitions doesn't really matter since the number of pods are the same regardless of arrows fired.

Richochet is irrelevant (scourge arrow pierces), as is far shot (damage is based on poison, not hit damage).

Occupying Force sounds cute if you're using the focused ballista setup and have mirage archer in the main links, but "plop totem-like thing and run" isn't the playstyle a fast build wants to go for.

Way of the Poacher from Raider just seems...meh? Since it basically costs 2 jewel slots *and* four points on top of that to really make the frenzies work? AoVeil tree stuff is irrelevant since build is already ailment immune and suppress capped.

Lastly, any onslaught from raider tree also seems questionable, since I think that would just be inferior to a pair of good rare jewels.

Maybe, as ridiculous as it sounds, nature's reprisal for the 15% more chaos damage, of all things? But that just sounds...*wrong*.

I would treat mapping as completely done and solved. I run Occupying Force and in maps it feels unecessary or annoying, because it interferes with Sentinels.

But in Bossfights it is quite great and even with our high mitigation we still want to dodge around, so applying them is doable. I would then go for a 10% alternative quality mirage archer that gives +1 Projectile but -1 second duration.

"

Naix1337 wrote:

I would treat mapping as completely done and solved. I run Occupying Force and in maps it feels unecessary or annoying, because it interferes with Sentinels.

But in Bossfights it is quite great and even with our high mitigation we still want to dodge around, so applying them is doable. I would then go for a 10% alternative quality mirage archer that gives +1 Projectile but -1 second duration.

Problem being that my mirage archer setup isn't for scourge arrow, but for Wither (see WolfieNA's scourge arrow guide).

"

IlyaK1986 wrote:

"

Naix1337 wrote:

I would treat mapping as completely done and solved. I run Occupying Force and in maps it feels unecessary or annoying, because it interferes with Sentinels.

But in Bossfights it is quite great and even with our high mitigation we still want to dodge around, so applying them is doable. I would then go for a 10% alternative quality mirage archer that gives +1 Projectile but -1 second duration.

Problem being that my mirage archer setup isn't for scourge arrow, but for Wither (see WolfieNA's scourge arrow guide).

Well you were asking for how to improve boss damage and ballistas are how you do it so if you do the MA blast rain setup then that is where you are losing damage for no reason as well. If you want more consistent withers there is always anomalous Withering Step that can apply like 10 withers at once. But the ballista withers are plenty consistent so not sure why would you want that. MA is also best damage support for SA so you are also losing that for bossing.

And I agree if you want to do forbiddens then occupying force is the best option for bossing, rest of the options are straigth up worse than 2 rare jewels and its not close.

Okay, well...damage seems to be ramping up, but gotta really hammer home the single target stuff.

The malevolence lifetap setup puts SO much socket pressure on this build it's unreal.

As of now, I just run the purity and herald as gem reservations, and use the other two slots for phantasmal blink arrow (try it with the cooldown mastery, it's UNREAL how much mobility it gives you), and withering step.

For my last 4-link, I'm honestly thinking about a tornado setup (tornado, onslaught, increased duration), and one link for a level 1 precision for a watcher's eye I have waiting for gem slots. Just bought a pair of snakebites with temp chains on hit, going to try that with a way of the poacher setup.

There are also some notables like entropy that may be REALLY good for the build for the increased skill duration, or there's also the option of going for the lioneye's fall shadow jewel to get the claw mastery to disable crits from poisoned enemies.

Some other options are a megalomaniac with disease vector to also cut off any healing (runic monsters in expedition, Maven heal, etc.).

Just...it feels like this build wants to be level 120 to get all the goodies it wants.