[3.13]🏹 Poison Barrage-VF / Scourge Arrow / TR PF | Bottled Fortify | The Tankiest Ranger + High DPS
" Always happy to be paired with a Ghostboner. Been a fun ride. |
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With 3.11 bringing both Wind Dancer and Eternal Youth right on our path we need to theorycraft how to take the regen to the next level. Wicked Ward shenanigans?
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" I personally find it's fun to fool around with numbers on PoB when I have time. Ironically, I've got plenty of time this league due to the covid19 lockdown (btw, I'm really sorry for those who were impacted by the pandemic). The ideas of the Hardened Scars + Foreboding flask, Fortify effect stacking, semi-perma endurance charges by Endurance Composure came up when I spent lots of time fooling around in PoB (also kudos to the PoB's original author and the fork ver's community). I'm not sure if I will have such luxury again in the coming league. But never say never, I guess. :) As the new league is just around the corner, what we can do atm is to wait for the patch note and keep our fingers crossed that the axes won't land on this build :). I'll work on improving the build regardless. Having said that, making another build is not off the table, but if it happens, it'd be another bow build. FYI: I'm having my eye on a physical damage bow or Caustic Arrow. For the latter, as /greenrasp mentioned earlier in the above comment, the new gloves with 23% chance to inflict withered on hit would bring excitement to not only this build but other chaos DoT builds. It'd be worth trying Caustic Arrow + Blast Rain with that gloves. We'd have 12 overlap explosions from Blast Rain (aw GMP and +1 arrow quiver), each of which has 48% chance to withered on hit with withering touch + the gloves (don't quote me on this just now). A withered stack would last up to 4.8 sec if I replicate the build in the OP. Furthermore, Blast Rain has a lock-on-target mechanic, so it'd be working out better than wither totem, not to mention that both Blast Rain and Caustic Arrow are AoE-based attacks. If things really work out, CA + BR may be an even better combo than SA + BR. # In Harvest, off-color crafting (to incorporate BR setup on the the Sporeguard chest) would become affordable. Since you are a veteran CA builder, what do you think on the above idea? In addition, I'd like to ask you the same thing: what is your plan for the upcoming league? " As of late, I've made my build deviate from using Darkscorn and Divine Flesh, opting for a rare bow and more raw HP (on top of our defense focusing on less damage taken). It's been working quite well for my leveling from 99 to 100 and the newly made Grasping Vines meme variants that can tank Sirus A8's attacks and Uber Atziri's empowered flame blast. Poison Scourge Arrow/Toxic Rain + Blast Rain PF| Bottled Fortify: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2851574 -- Last edited by WolfieNa on Jun 15, 2020, 2:17:33 AM
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"I'm not really a pro player / theorycrafter by any stretch. I like playing chaos dot skills though because they're more straight forward for me to understand than skills that have 10 different ways of scaling them (do I go for more crit? do I go for phys as ele / ele as chaos? attack / cast speed? resistance penetration / exposure? where's the breakpoint and sweet spot of all those stats? etc.) I always wanted to try sporeguard but every league the price has been pretty prohibitive to me (like 2ex baseline without links), but this season everything herald stackers didn't need went for peanuts (20c void battery, sub 1ex eternity shroud etc.) same with sporeguard, I got it for 40-50c don't remember exactly. I think the explosions help clear in confined spaces, but during delirium where we had to constantly move forward a lot of the potential was wasted. In a league where we can be more stationary it'll probably do more work. Also it helps to get extra anointment in a world where cluster jewels make nearly any build point starved. On the other hand I barely passed 6k life and while I think it's sufficient for softcore and my playstyle, I've seen people reach 7,2k hp on builds that use rare chest and helmet. Even on scourge arrow, not sure if your version or the deathbeam's one. Also the reason I used it is I hate crafting. I'm pretty sure your customized chests with double influence crafts would fit most builds better when you pick best mods for each build than a unique, but this is usually out of my budget and skill level. There are other ways to get explosions like unspeakable gifts cluster or crusader explody chest, but both of them would cost more to get it on suffiently good items. However if budget is not an issue, something probably worth testing. Now on the subject of Blast Rain, I've never tried the skill because it's extremely graphic cluttery. Every time I watched your gameplay video I had a hard time spotting where scourge arrow pods are because everything drowns in the blast rain orange circles. If you like it, sure, try it in any build and see how it fits. I'm wondering if your idea would be better with toxic rain though than caustic arrow, because toxic rain has a lot of fast hits (even with low accuracy some of them will hit) while CA is only 1 shot. And both could stack withered from gloves (Toxic rain and blast rain). I'm not sure if I'm sold on the gloves 100%, as it's another 0 life item and also seems to be more rewarding a build that goes into elemental damage. However it doesn't state that withered stops working for chaos damage and only works for elemental, so we can assume for now it works for both, 6% for chaos and 4% for ele. You could also anoint reworked corruption for even stronger withered. You could also use a vaal gem (glorious vanity), if you like fishing for specific notables one of the outcomes is "Ritual of Shadows:(25-35)% increased Chaos Damage, 25% chance to inflict Withered for 2 seconds on Hit", so if you managed to roll 2 of them in radius you'd be close too 100% chance to wither on hit with gloves and withering touch support. The problem with withered though is that from what I read each stack has independent duration (akin to poison) and doesn't refresh duration of old stacks (unlike frenzy charges), so from my understanding having 3 totems with multiple totems can keep simultaneously more stacks at a given time than 1 hitting ability like blast rain unless you have crazy high attack speed (however mirage archer has attack speed penalty on it) or multiple sources of applying it. Also I'd expect if you scaled skill effect duration that should extend the duration of withered debuff too, but not 100% sure. Also not sure about temp chains if that would help for the stacks to "stick" on a mob for longer, I think some builds used temp chains to extend poisons on mobs, but you'd know more about it since you theorycrafted around poison. Also btw question, why is blast rain better for your current build than let's say rain of arrows? Is it because as you said it has "homing" property / auto targets or why? Personally as I said I think your idea could be better with toxic rain, as it benefits from all the other stuff you'd want for stacking withered: fast attack speed, increased skill duration, increased area of effect. Anyway I composed this post abit hastily, so hopefully it makes any sense. | |
" I guess you are onto something here. :D Gonna be a long travel to Wicked Ward from Ranger starting point, not too bad if you're a Shadow though. Poison Scourge Arrow/Toxic Rain + Blast Rain PF| Bottled Fortify:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2851574 -- | |
" Another detailed answer. I would expect nothing less from Viktranka. Although you said you were not a pro player / theorycrafter by any stretch, I found your comments on skill mechanic and gears very spot on, not only on this thread but also on other builds. " I was 7.2K with the Fettle small cluster. Then I decided that I want to meme with Grasping Vines, so I dropped 400 HP for that. The meme worked, I didn't roll back to Fettle. " I understand your reasoning. The reason I was able to craft so much this league was partially Delirium just drops so much stuffs. I got so lucky early game with a 3-point Voices in the 2nd week (dropped from wave 17 or 18 double-boss Simulacrum iirc), and that was only my 3rd or 4th simul. The next ~40 Simuls I ran were drought. That made me feel that GGG kind of let the drop rate float in the first few weeks to boost player engagement and tighten it up afterward. Maybe you can try farming in the first 2 weeks a bit more than you have usually done. " Unspeakable Gift is good for mapping. It is recommended for my SA build if you already satisfy with your DPS. You would trade Unholy Grace (+30% chaos damage, +10% attack speed) for Unspeakable Gift (no inherent extra DPS but chance to explode enemies). " Yeah, TorsteinTheFallen brought Ritual of Shadows to my attention, and I have been able to acquire it and tried it. Unfortunately, it took more skill points than I could spare for an additional 25% chance to inflict withered on hit. That's part of the reason I'm excited about the gloves which grant 23% chance to wither on hit right off the bat. " Yes, each stack has its own down-counter (base duration 2sec). Using 3 wither totems allows you to inflict 3 stacks at a time. " Based on the video showncase, I hope you would get the impression that Blast Rain boosts the poison damage by SA. However, we need to work out the math to see why BR is so good in this build. Before we get started, let me explain what's so appealing about Blast Rain. First of all, all of BR's explosions overlap. With Awaken GMP and +1 arrow, we have 12 overlapping explosions. My current APS is 4.56 and with a withering touch gem (25% chance to inflict withered on hit) attached to Blast Rain + MiA (60% less APS), the number of withered stacks generated per second is: 4.56 x 0.4 x 12 x 0.25 = 5.472 stacks / sec (this is why I have "+10% chance to gain a frenzy charge on hit" on the chest to make sure we have all the APS we need) So time to max cap (15) stacks: 15 / 5.472 = 2.74 sec We stack increased skill effect duration from the skill tree, cluster jewel (details discussed in the cluster jewel section in the OP), and increased duration support, which is attached to Blast Rain. That makes withered lasts ~5 seconds, i.e. ~2.5x increased. Having Temp Chain is great, but it would require us to replace the +10% chance to gain frenzy charge on hit by 'Additional curse on' the chest piece. That would throw the build off-balance, which was not something I want. " As I discussed above, the most appealing characteristic of Blast Rain is that all of its explosion overlap. It allows quick withered stack generation with awaken GMP, +1 arrow (quiver). Increased Duration Support gem lengthens the duration of the withered stack as well. Proof (just for the record): " Poison Scourge Arrow/Toxic Rain + Blast Rain PF| Bottled Fortify:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2851574 -- | |
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Look like I hit a word limit in the previous post, so continue to finish it here.
" Yeah, it makes sense to me. You haven't told us your plan though. :) Poison Scourge Arrow/Toxic Rain + Blast Rain PF| Bottled Fortify:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2851574 -- | |
"You quoted the post twice so that would do it. :P "Well tbh I have usually hard time deciding until last moment. I found out I have very narrow category of build that I enjoy and somehow caustic arrow / toxic rain just fill that niche. I also like bane, but harder to get enough damage on it. Was thinking of rebuilding my old scuffed bane witch but with glancing blow "nerf" I'm not sure that's worth trying anymore (basically it's too far on the tree from the chaos / es areas). At some point wanted to try a golemancer but they're not league start friendly with all the mandatory jewels, and I'm not a good farmer to be able to make multiple characters in a league, also don't like making "throwaway" league starters just to fuel the real character. Also now that agnostic is coming to the tree, was thinking if anything is worth building with it but I can't find something I can trust, in my eyes while it gives you great sustain the only successful builds with it were either Zdps (brittleknee's fossil farmer) or riding on an OP skill (akane's ball lightning mines). And I'm not daring enough to try something nobody tried before because if it fails, it will ruin my whole league experience and tbh I'm eyeing that nice tree-portal. Dunno if you know any other builds with agnostic that function (and won't rely on likely-to-be-nerfed mechanics like archmage brands). Yeah, I end up on chaos skills usually because they're viable league starters, not expensive to make, can do all map mods (mostly talking about reflect and mandatory kill some version of Atziri challenge), don't require too much micro management, and aren't inherently glass cannon (contrary to let's say ice shot or cast on crit whatever). Oh, and don't drop your fps to a single digit, but hopefully with Vulcan we won't have to worry about that anymore. | |
" Thanks for the shoutout Wolfie, I played it up until the last day. As I said in the beginning I haven't played since Breach so it was fun to be able to handle end game content and the build worked great. I ended up going back to the Aul's type build, I didn't want to lose my tailwind boots for an endurance charge and I couldn't make the helmet, just not enough bases for sale at the end. But oh well. Looking forward to probably trying it again next league, the idea of the new gloves, better defense keystones sounds promising, that and the fact I really only play bow builds anyway. Probably start as a toxic rain PF and then switch over once I get some loot. IGN: Bonered Last edited by Ghostboner on Jun 15, 2020, 8:53:50 PM
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" I'm really glad that you still play until the very end with the build (and congratz on reaching level 96 if I'm not mistaken). Btw, both the Aul's variant and the +1 endurance variant should work quite well. So don't worry choosing one over another. :) There is a new variant I created with Aul's and +2 endurance that cleared the 100% Delirious T18 juiced map x2 beyond quite well. I'll update PoB for those who are interested. Have a good break and see you around. Poison Scourge Arrow/Toxic Rain + Blast Rain PF| Bottled Fortify:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2851574 -- |
