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

I'm running in the end for Darkscorne + Divine Flesh, with Hardened Scars instead of Cleansed Thoughts.
I already have the full equipment ready. Is it not advisable to equip this jewel until level 90+ as suggested in the PoB's tree section?

I've also dropped Skitterbots for Malevolence and got a +dot multiplier when affected by Malevolence Watcher's Eye.

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Miyavi wrote:

I'm running in the end for Darkscorne + Divine Flesh, with Hardened Scars instead of Cleansed Thoughts.
I already have the full equipment ready. Is it not advisable to equip this jewel until level 90+ as suggested in the PoB's tree section?

I've also dropped Skitterbots for Malevolence and got a +dot multiplier when affected by Malevolence Watcher's Eye.

Nah, you can equip it anytime you want as long as you manage to cap your chaos resistance to 85. And that sounds like good plan.

After I got enough mana reduction I dropped skitters for Malevolence as well.

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oPlaiD wrote:

In PoB going from Darkscorn to my VP+poison mod bow gives me nearly 45% more poison damage:

I got lucky and bought the base already 6L with VP+Poison mod and two trash suffixes for 4ex, so it was fairly cheap to wipe the suffixes and multimod it. Not many good crafted suffixes so I went with the top attack speed roll and the hybrid accuracy mod, but you can do what you want.

Chaos Dmg+Delve Poison mod will top Darkscorn, and this bow will top that by a significant margin.

It isn't THAT bad to craft one yourself now since Corroded fossil has dropped in price to 4/5c compared to the 10/11c I was paying for rolls before I managed to buy that base. Plus the Delve stash tab has made fossil buying in bulk much easier.

Rolling bows with just Corroded fossil is the simplest and generally most effective way to land these two mods. You can do Corroded+Aberrant if you want the chance to land the Despair on hit mod and it'll give you about the same chance to land VP+Delve mod as solo Corroded, but then you have to deal with buying twice as many fossils.

And just be warned when I say it isn't "that bad" to craft a bow like this, we're talking something like a 0.75% chance to land any level VP mod plus the Delve poison mod. That means you'll need to spend maybe 5-6ex on average to land the mod combination, and even if you do it may have an extra trash prefix or three suffixes so you'll need to land annuls to make it craftable.

But if you're looking for another place to push this build and you aren't doing a Darkscorn+Divine Flesh setup, going for the VP bow is the way to do it.

Yeah, ofc VP delve bow is shitton of damage over Darkscorn but that is like you said, pretty low chance to craft. Even though, 5-6ex doesnt sound as bad as I originally thought. Would you mind if I would put link to your bow to end-game optimization section?

I've noticed that many of the end-gamers running this build are using one or even two Circle of Nostalgia (Synthesized) rings, particularly with the (40-60)% increased Chaos Damage while affected by Herald of Agony and Herald of Agony has (70-100)% increased Buff Effect stats.

I never played synthesis so some possibly very basic synthesis questions follows.

Q1: What would be the approach to acquire one of these rings? (Crafting / some particular grinding site / simply saving exalts to buy it?)

Q2: The <One to three random synthesis implicit modifiers> seems to vary a lot: is this just up to pure luck, or (given the answer to Q1 above) is there some method similar to fossil crafting to in synthesis, to "somewhat control" the RNG for these?

Thanks!

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artradis wrote:

I've noticed that many of the end-gamers running this build are using one or even two Circle of Nostalgia (Synthesized) rings, particularly with the (40-60)% increased Chaos Damage while affected by Herald of Agony and Herald of Agony has (70-100)% increased Buff Effect stats.

I never played synthesis so some possibly very basic synthesis questions follows.

Q1: What would be the approach to acquire one of these rings? (Crafting / some particular grinding site / simply saving exalts to buy it?)

Q2: The <One to three random synthesis implicit modifiers> seems to vary a lot: is this just up to pure luck, or (given the answer to Q1 above) is there some method similar to fossil crafting to in synthesis, to "somewhat control" the RNG for these?

Thanks!

They introduced rings (and some other Synthesis uniques) back this league as purely random drops from Zana Synthesis maps from bosses. The best way is to simply buy them, Circles drop very commonly so market is pretty full of at least the basic ones. You can ignore the implicits, just the inc chaos damage and hoag buff effect is important. And they drop with already set implicits, you cant synthetize them like you could in Synthesis.

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thedeathbeam wrote:

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Miyavi wrote:

I'm running in the end for Darkscorne + Divine Flesh, with Hardened Scars instead of Cleansed Thoughts.
I already have the full equipment ready. Is it not advisable to equip this jewel until level 90+ as suggested in the PoB's tree section?

I've also dropped Skitterbots for Malevolence and got a +dot multiplier when affected by Malevolence Watcher's Eye.

Nah, you can equip it anytime you want as long as you manage to cap your chaos resistance to 85. And that sounds like good plan.

After I got enough mana reduction I dropped skitters for Malevolence as well.

"

oPlaiD wrote:

In PoB going from Darkscorn to my VP+poison mod bow gives me nearly 45% more poison damage:

I got lucky and bought the base already 6L with VP+Poison mod and two trash suffixes for 4ex, so it was fairly cheap to wipe the suffixes and multimod it. Not many good crafted suffixes so I went with the top attack speed roll and the hybrid accuracy mod, but you can do what you want.

Chaos Dmg+Delve Poison mod will top Darkscorn, and this bow will top that by a significant margin.

It isn't THAT bad to craft one yourself now since Corroded fossil has dropped in price to 4/5c compared to the 10/11c I was paying for rolls before I managed to buy that base. Plus the Delve stash tab has made fossil buying in bulk much easier.

Rolling bows with just Corroded fossil is the simplest and generally most effective way to land these two mods. You can do Corroded+Aberrant if you want the chance to land the Despair on hit mod and it'll give you about the same chance to land VP+Delve mod as solo Corroded, but then you have to deal with buying twice as many fossils.

And just be warned when I say it isn't "that bad" to craft a bow like this, we're talking something like a 0.75% chance to land any level VP mod plus the Delve poison mod. That means you'll need to spend maybe 5-6ex on average to land the mod combination, and even if you do it may have an extra trash prefix or three suffixes so you'll need to land annuls to make it craftable.

But if you're looking for another place to push this build and you aren't doing a Darkscorn+Divine Flesh setup, going for the VP bow is the way to do it.

Yeah, ofc VP delve bow is shitton of damage over Darkscorn but that is like you said, pretty low chance to craft. Even though, 5-6ex doesnt sound as bad as I originally thought. Would you mind if I would put link to your bow to end-game optimization section?

Yeah, feel free to use it if you want. It's still not 100% optimized since it has base 22% quality. I don't have Hillock available and wanted to wait until I had more than 1 white socket from Vorici before using a beast corrupt to give it base 30%. It's also possible that crit+quality or something may be more optimal for some players, like if you are playing the build as assassin. So just some things to keep in mind.

The other note is that obviously if you are socketing SA in your weapon, you can't use a -15 mana cost chest, so you may or may not feel like you need something to deal with that. Right now I'm completely comfortable running SA in there with lvl 20 Malevolence, Precision, and HoaG linked to a lvl 3 Enlighten. With one mana leech node I haven't really ran into situations where I feel like mana is a problem, and right now I'm not using an enduring hybrid flask (though I think I may swap to one for that sweet Fortify soon). I can still charge SA to max and get infused channeling when I want to, but I can't hold a channel too much past that. Some players will likely have much less tolerance for that than I do. I also have a -2 mana cost implicit on one of my Circlets of Nostalgia, though overall that doesn't make a huge difference when the SA cost is 19.

Em, one more stupid qusteion: what skill should I use for delve? Scourge arrow?! And what setup for totnado shot?

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oPlaiD wrote:

Yeah, feel free to use it if you want. It's still not 100% optimized since it has base 22% quality. I don't have Hillock available and wanted to wait until I had more than 1 white socket from Vorici before using a beast corrupt to give it base 30%. It's also possible that crit+quality or something may be more optimal for some players, like if you are playing the build as assassin. So just some things to keep in mind.

The other note is that obviously if you are socketing SA in your weapon, you can't use a -15 mana cost chest, so you may or may not feel like you need something to deal with that. Right now I'm completely comfortable running SA in there with lvl 20 Malevolence, Precision, and HoaG linked to a lvl 3 Enlighten. With one mana leech node I haven't really ran into situations where I feel like mana is a problem, and right now I'm not using an enduring hybrid flask (though I think I may swap to one for that sweet Fortify soon). I can still charge SA to max and get infused channeling when I want to, but I can't hold a channel too much past that. Some players will likely have much less tolerance for that than I do. I also have a -2 mana cost implicit on one of my Circlets of Nostalgia, though overall that doesn't make a huge difference when the SA cost is 19.

Yeah, of course, I just want to have some visualization of VP + Delve Mod item in the post and I don't have one atm. Alright updated the post with it.

And yeah I am well aware that it might cause mana issues or inconvenience for some people, but that is exactly why I made the end-game optimization section, getting stuff listed there is not very convenient, but if people are looking for either DPS or survivability upgrades and are willing to invest into them, they are very worth it.

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undredem wrote:

Em, one more stupid qusteion: what skill should I use for delve? Scourge arrow?! And what setup for totnado shot?

Yeah, I used SA last league for Delve. If you want, you can use Tornado Shot, with classic setup, e.g TS enchant, Rigwalds Quills, GMP instead of Infused Channeling etc etc. Also Dying Sun somewhere (probably instead of Cinderswallow).

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thedeathbeam wrote:

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cliimp wrote:

how does this build proform with blight maps?

Its pretty good, prolif mostly takes care of everything. Some tanky bosses can be sometimes an issue if they are alone (e.g no mobs around to prolif from). But someone mentioned that just freezing mobs and letting boss come to them basically solves that, so that should do the trick. But from the blighted maps I run, they were pretty easy (compared to summoner I was playing before, this build performed a lot better).

I had to look quite a few page down to find this. I'm happy to have found it. Any update on high tier blighted maps?

I'm currently running a Heavy Strike Jugg build and even though I like it I would like to levelup a second character speciffically for blighted maps. I never played Pathfinder nor scourge arrow so it's a great opportunity.

From what I see, the budget is like 7 ex for 6-link darkscorn, 2 ex for helmet enchant, probably a few ex for 6 link body. That would be 12-15 ex as entry price to feel good. Am I missing something? Can I bypass expensive items for T15 blighted maps?

If I understand well, SA + prolif eats lanes. I still have questions regarding the tankyness and how you manage the unique monsters:

- How likelly are you to survive a large bunch of fireballs from the fire portal mobs? Do you just prevent these mobs from gathering in large numbers thanks to the offscreen damage from proliferation?

- Again regarding tankyness, how much do you rely on manually dodging everything? When to many mobs are on screen, I have significant FPS drops so I kind of need to "facetank" a bit. That might just not happen thanks to the offscreen dps of this build. Can you comment on that? With my strike build I get a LOT of mobs close to the pump but you probably have just a few on screen.

- Do you need ice towers to cage unique blight monsters? Or can you put yourself on his path and tank him while DPSing?

I'm really looking forward to try this. I'll wait your answers to make my final decision though. I was hoping to do T15 blighted maps on a budget lesser than 10 ex but you got to spend what you got to spend :D

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Rootsmann wrote:

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thedeathbeam wrote:

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cliimp wrote:

how does this build proform with blight maps?

Its pretty good, prolif mostly takes care of everything. Some tanky bosses can be sometimes an issue if they are alone (e.g no mobs around to prolif from). But someone mentioned that just freezing mobs and letting boss come to them basically solves that, so that should do the trick. But from the blighted maps I run, they were pretty easy (compared to summoner I was playing before, this build performed a lot better).

I had to look quite a few page down to find this. I'm happy to have found it. Any update on high tier blighted maps?

I'm currently running a Heavy Strike Jugg build and even though I like it I would like to levelup a second character speciffically for blighted maps. I never played Pathfinder nor scourge arrow so it's a great opportunity.

From what I see, the budget is like 7 ex for 6-link darkscorn, 2 ex for helmet enchant, probably a few ex for 6 link body. That would be 12-15 ex as entry price to feel good. Am I missing something? Can I bypass expensive items for T15 blighted maps?

If I understand well, SA + prolif eats lanes. I still have questions regarding the tankyness and how you manage the unique monsters:

- How likelly are you to survive a large bunch of fireballs from the fire portal mobs? Do you just prevent these mobs from gathering in large numbers thanks to the offscreen damage from proliferation?

- Again regarding tankyness, how much do you rely on manually dodging everything? When to many mobs are on screen, I have significant FPS drops so I kind of need to "facetank" a bit. That might just not happen thanks to the offscreen dps of this build. Can you comment on that? With my strike build I get a LOT of mobs close to the pump but you probably have just a few on screen.

- Do you need ice towers to cage unique blight monsters? Or can you put yourself on his path and tank him while DPSing?

I'm really looking forward to try this. I'll wait your answers to make my final decision though. I was hoping to do T15 blighted maps on a budget lesser than 10 ex but you got to spend what you got to spend :D

Yeah, I did few t15 maps with this char and after trying the freeze trick for bosses, it was pretty simple.

The entry cost really depends on what version of build you want to run. The version without Darkscorn and Divine Flesh is maybe 1-2ex for crafting the 6link body if you are very unlucky, 80-100c for crafting the bow to get average rolls, 100c for decent-ish Circle of Nostalgia, 2ex for enchant and lets say 2ex for filling out rest of the gear with pretty good rares. This league I did not even got the enchant and it was fine, but of course the difference between having and not having the enchant is very huge and its well worth the price.

For groups of monsters off-screening me: Yeah, they simply don't because they are dead as I off-screen them first :D For face-tanking actual hits, we are mostly relying on evading most of the damage, and if something actually hits us, recovery from Cinderswallow that brings us back to full hp (and because the build has big EHP, you will not get one shot).

You can tank bosses most of the time but I would not recommend it if there is nothing around to kill and recover from.

For general blight map playstyle, as you said, nothing really comes close, except bosses sometimes. What I usually do is just stand in middle and shoot in general direction of lanes, and if boss comes through and he is not frozen near mobs, I walk behind him and shoot through him so my SA will also kill mobs going from different directions until I kill him. I managed to finish few blighted maps where portal spawned right next to center just because I was able to cover the sides I needed to cover by shooting through the mobs spawning and off-screening other lanes.

I do not have best PC as well, so I lag quite a lot in Blight maps, but so far my strategy always worked and I dont think I died once in blight map.

All right I'm sold.

I believe I want to go the Darkscorn + Divine flesh route as it seems insane in tankyness. I can see that you choose the other way. Is it because you like to do more damage or something else?

Also I just realized, I dont need two 6 link so I can cut the budget by 3-4 ex easily, right?