[3.13]🏹 Poison Barrage-VF / Scourge Arrow / TR PF | Bottled Fortify | The Tankiest Ranger + High DPS

hi
i'm not sure what gems (besides CA and TR SETUP) i should be using between lvls 40 and 60
i'm 54 atm and im kinda new to this game (played only 2 characters before)

i'm actually using
TR - Void Manipulation - Faster attacks - Vicious projectiles - Added chaos dmg
CA - Lesser multiple projectiles - Void manipulation - Mirage archer
HoA - Pierce - Void manipulation - Faster atks
and others (Dash - Second wind / Steelskin / Stone golem)

can someone help :D

I think I switched to Scourge Arrow/Blast Rain ~ 50.

I don't see Despair; that's a huge damage boost. ALso, CWDT setup, Flesh and Stone, Enduring Cry?

Hey is there any alternate quality gems that would be good to persue (over the suggest normal/awakened gems or in place of?)

Also thanks for the guide! Been following to level 88 and its been super useful.

Hey there, howdy!

Sorry for the late response. I'm currently occupied by other family duties, so wouldn't find time to reply as usual. The good thing is I have just finished the diaper changing mastery, so I'm back into the fray.

"

aerial wrote:

How do you accurately compare damage of voltaxic variant to rare bows?

It's not apple to apple to say the least. V-Rift able to deal large damage is thanks to its large hit that applies high-magnitude shock, which amplifies the main poison damages. A spreadsheet to display the magnitude of shock, i.e. increased damage taken on enemies, is available here.

Thanks to that large shock and hit damage (from init arrow), V-Rift has better clear potential than rare bow on most content. The latter, however, will have better poison DPS.

"

I wonder how would this work if you kept acrobatics, don't go for armor and transcendence, and just got the conversions + lorewave. 78% res, 20% less elemental from flasks (vinktar + taste of hate + dying sun), fortify, even without armor mitigation this should provide very nice survivability. And we would have 40% dodge from acrobatics, and we can ignore armor, no need to get jade flask and iron reflexes.

If you'd like to go the Transcendence path, I'd recommend looking into aurican's comments.

"

aurican65 wrote:

I'm testing out transcendence (new keystone) to see how much I can mitigate incoming damage for the purpose of deep delving without going zhp, so far it's been good. My character isn't optimized yet but I should fully shift all damage taken to elemental/chaos so I receive no physical damage. I'm also using nature's patience but will likely drop it once incoming damage is too much to face tank.

I expect most of the damage I receive is chaos damage, all the elements should be mitigated heavily despite the 71% ele res.

I'm looking for more ideas to mitigate damage further if anyone has ideas. Some things I've considered:
- loreweave (it sucks)
- switching from immortal call to molten shell (if I do I'll also invest less in endurance charges) because immortal call doesn't reduce my chaos damage taken
- elusive boots
- max chaos res quiver
- switch chest from phys taken as cold to fire instead. Currently I receive ~40% phys as cold and only 12% for fire. It makes sense to spread ele damage evenly so I get the most out of my armour. Taste of hate helps reduce the 40% but I think switching is more efficient.

Also, check his PF build deviation if you are interested in finding more about Immortal PF with Transcendence. He went CI at the end.

Thanks for sharing your finding, Aerial. I don't have an end-game strength-stacking to test, so I refrain from being so certain, but there are some points I'd like to comment.

"

aerial wrote:

I've been playing some more on my SA str stacking version.
Tried some different skills, for example ditching blast rain combo, and applying wither via withering step alternate quality. You get lot of combo buffs from enhance+duration if you have free 6-link.
It is quite interesting.
Anomalous withering step at level 21 with 44 quality (from enhance) and 20/20 duration, and 20/20 second wind - has stats as follows:
Applies 11 wither stacks (7 base + 4 from quality) that last 6.1 second, and ability has cooldown of 2.33s. So this allows to apply wither instantly, and then again after 2s to 15 stacks. It combos well with eternal suffering node, so that enemies start with 5 stacks form hits. Works really well, thers no windup/delay as with blast rain or totems. Viable alternative.

Actually, with 11+ APS, I don't really have any issue with keeping up with all the wither stacks. If you so choose to do the alternate withering touch alone with enhance support, that should be OK, too. But I don't think it could beat a high-APS BR in terms of DPS and wither maintenance. You need to stand close to the targets to inflict withers while BR can be shot from afar. Btw, you can always use Withering touch with BR.

By the way, SA + BR is the best in 100% deli clear with Golden Rule. I am sitting on ~50mil thorn arrows DPS and the same defense as usual. Without BR to keep 100 poison stacks, there is no way to maintain such high DPS.

"

Other skills to link with it, anomalous enduring cry, same links. We get 2 uses, 88% increased warcry speed, durtion 4s, cooldown down to 6.2s. We can use it a lot and it is very fast cast. with 4 endurance charges, during the duration we gain additional 8% physical reduction.

Smoke mine, 4 uses, duration over 10s (really nice qol), 29% movement speed, 22% attack/cast speed.

I think the alternate Enduring cry is good, and the smoke mine looks promising.

"

Whats worth noting, mirage archer couldn't generate frenzy charges on bosses through blood rage, because it only works if you attack not mirage archer (he still can trigger charges on kill for you, the basic blood rage mechanic, but not the alt quality on hit one).

This has been discussed in our thread before. We don't use MiA to gain frenzy charges. I'd just like to add that MiA can ignite, blind on hit, and apply curse on hit. So, Cinderswallow works great with MiA-BR. On a different note, the frenzy charge in bossfight is not that important since our DPS is just too high without it, and for clear touch mobs, such as ones in the 100% deli, we can gain frenzy charges by blood rage.

"

Another thing to take away from this is how powerful mirage archer is for main SA link. It provides still decent more multiplier (~36%), but to the way how SA works, that your dps is inflated because you never charge it perfectly to 5 stacks and release without delay, not to mention when you move. Mirage archer will always charge to max and shoot perfectly, so his real dps uptime is great. It really does feel good to have it, for clear, for safety while looting, and for bossing. It is something that shouldn't be dismissed easily, it is pretty big trade-off to sacrifice this link to use it for blast rain in my opinion.

It depends I think. If you rely on dodging as main defense, i.e. you cannot afford to stand and shoot against tough enemies, you really want MiA on your 6-link SA because it shoots while you kite the enemies. Therefore, you maintain your uptime DPS. The same thing if you have low APS. Our build, on the other hand, has quite good defense that allows us to just stand and shoot. High APS (11+) makes 5-stage SA less than a sec. With that high APS, you want your 6-link a DPS multiplier rather than a slow MiA, so you harvest the maximum damage out of your main setup. Also, don't forget that MiA-BR can deal good damage. I'm looking at 3mil-5mil BR in the end-game, so MiA-BR deal around 1mil-1.5mil DPS on its own. So, there's that.

"

Other things that I've tried, is to ditch mana reduction on chest, go for enduring flask (so sacrifice bunch of flask life replenish rate because this flask is weaker), but instead solve mana problem. I noticed that what was causing most issues for me, running delirium maps, as used to chaos build I was just vaaling them all and running regardless of mods. -max res mod was super dangerous, and lorewave complerely plays around it. Not to mention you get 3% extra max elemental res. It is amazing defensive option. No transcendence or any other conversion to elemental shenanigans, just lorewave alone works pretty well.

I think Loreweave is an interesting take. I would need to think of it a bit more since losing the -mana cost and a flask slot for +3% max resist isn't too much of a gain for me. I can craft 120% inc fortify while focused on rare chest as well. And if I pair it with a Hyperboreus, I am having Focus with 50% uptime.

Note: Focus cooldown starts right away. So with Hyperboreus (max CD roll), you have 8-sec CD. As a result, your Focus has 50% uptime. This makes a cheap Hyperboreus a great belt for our build, only beaten by a well-rolled Stygian.

"

Final note, is to fit decoy totem. I tried using some random spells in my cwdt setup other than immortal call, but they didnt seem to be worth it. Self cast decoy totem trivializes lot of boss fights if you know how to use it. For example sirus fight, clone circle phase, you can control where he shoots, makes this really foolproof. Also speeds it up by directing storms as they spawn, so you don't have to wait for them to move, can proc next phase almost instantly. It is useful in many hard fight, hard to beat this much value you get out of 1 socket.

This is also an interesting idea. I guess when one reaches the end-game setup, one doesn't worry too much about Sirus attacks. Before that, maybe the decoy totem could a cool situational defense. Thanks for sharing.

One thing I saw from your PoB is that your defense seems to be a bit lower than expected at the end game, and you don't have stun avoidance if I'm not mistaken. It could be challenging to stand and shoot SA without stun avoidance, esp. in 100% deli or Sirus. On the other hand, you've got quite impressive DPS with your strength-stacking (congratz on that end).

Other build defense (PoB, Vaal Grace disabled)


Your defense (PoB)

(PoB counts energy shield which is not useful for us since Blood Rage degenerates your ES quite quickly).
P/S: let me know if I made any mistake in your PoB.

"

LtDrunk wrote:

Hi,
First of all, thanks for the great build!
It has felt fantastic (up until now, will get there soon) and it is really fun to play.
It's my first SA-build, and I'm pleasently surprised with the skill.

I am now lvl 92, and have about 5-7 exalts to spare on upgrades.

The DPS is sufficient, and I know where I can upgrade that in the future.
My problem is survivability though. Which has me scratching my head since so many of you praise the survivability of the build.

My biggest survivability problem is heists. VERY often (1/3 or even 1/2 heists in Area 83) I get killed of something almost instant. I've lost so many items and drops to this :(

So now I'm turning to you, the experts. What am I missing in my current build when it comes to survivability?
There must be something I've missed, or overlooked.

Would appriciate your help alot!

Here's my PoB (don't know how to link my items and links, sorry)
https://pastebin.com/xaZYnypC

Hey,

It seems you have the wrong Cinderswallow. You want stun avoidance + MS. Also respect the channelling wheel (they are for leveling). Use those points for life. You are a bit low on that end.

Grab as much jewel sockets as you can and fill them with good Viridian jewels (life, attack speed, etc.)

Grab Dying Sun. People with enough defense prefer Quicksilver for faster speed. For you, I'd rather replace that with Vessel of Vinktar and craft +30% movespeed on your other rare flask. Try to increase your chaos resist a bit, so you can ditch poison immune and replace it with better flask suffix.

Try a boots with Tailwind, life, resist. Then replace your rare ring with Nostalgia for chaos damage/resist.

Let us know if you'd like to follow up later. Have fun!

Hey there,

Trying the Voltaxic Variation, as I love seing Herald of thunder in action :D
It's smooth so far, next giga upgrade will be Malevolance Watcher's eye / Forti Helm / Double affixe quiver...

I do have one question, as I have a blind jewel in the belt, would you recommand ditching Flesh & Stone to get Artic Armor ? Im a bit afraid to lose a reliable source of blind.

Gratz

@WolfieNa - interesting comments.
As for POB import, it should be accurate, I did swap skills to different specs, including melee, so sometimes items/gems can be messed up. Btw melee poison skills, in my case are easy to swap, grab 2 claw wheels, respec few bow nodes, and this is already most optimal setup. And melee skills suck, the throwing ones such as cobra lash or venom gyre, melee as well, pestilent strike. Bow seems to be vastly superior, damage is at least 50% more, single target is good, and you're not melee which is huge penalty by itself. Pretty disappointing in that regard. I think wander is quite bit better than dedicated poison skills for claws..

As for pob defenses, well, I have less health (below 6k), I don't use arctic armour (because of malevolence reservation) going for vitality + precision instead at level 1, to get some extra damage. Id swap those to arctic armour, especially with this gg alt quality freeze, but it is too costly to fit. Str stacker can't afford dropping amulet such as aul's uprising that would solve mana reservation problem.
I do not have capped chaos resist also, would require some minmaxing, getting it from either tree or another rare item.
Also I don't go for iron reflexes, inc armour/evasion, I stick to flat dodge, so mitigation there is lower.
Stuff does die fast however. I could trade some dps to get more tanky, in fact there is lot of room to get more life. You can keep unspeccing tree to lets say drop to 20M scourge arrow and grab bunch of life nodes for example.

One more note about stun, I do use Unwavering Evil on cluster jewel, and I do not get stunned, I think the way it works is any time you use chaos ability it cancels stun. So if you play a map and just tap scourge arrow, you interrupt whatever stun occured, you can't even feel it. I don't recall being stunned single time as I played this character to level 99. Going dodge route also helps there, because you get hit less often so chance to get stunned occurs less often. At least I think it works like that, initially I though it only protects from stun during skill channeling, but if it did, I should get stunned pretty often, and I don't get stunned at all.

As for dying to stuff, I think crit on heavily juiced maps is another bad mod, I did die in such map, in delirium (i think it was 60% 3 orbs), just randomly 1 shot by some basic attack. Last season I did play carrion golems with brass dome (crit immunity) and that was definitely something you could notice in maps with this mod, helps quite a bit, you don't get that insane damage spikes once per multiple maps. Chance to get crit is relatively low, but when it happens it sucks.

Withering step range is fairly large (36 units in my case), keep in mind it is chaos skill and pathfinder aoe affects it. For 100% delitium map, Yu would get more value from blast rain for sure, when it comes to debuffing enemies, but whenever you can do content quicker, the less you need that constant rain of stacking debuffs. I have high dps, and 5 stacks is applies from my regular attacks. When I encounter tankier monster, boss spawns, I instantly cap the stacks with withering step on that target. Same goes for map bosses in normal T16s. And there is pretty big value from that mirage archer shooting constantly perfectly charged 5 stack SA.

Excuse addressing your thoughts in such random order :)

Hey guys, i'm trying out the build. So far it's pretty good. I'm just feeling like I dont have much damage right now (Around 500K sirus dps).

Here's the POB :
https://pastebin.com/z1pEeLBk

What upgrades should i go for ? I want to go double influence helm but I dont know how to fix res afterwards.

Thanks !

"

Shaade wrote:

Hey there,

Trying the Voltaxic Variation, as I love seing Herald of thunder in action :D
It's smooth so far, next giga upgrade will be Malevolance Watcher's eye / Forti Helm / Double affixe quiver...

I do have one question, as I have a blind jewel in the belt, would you recommand ditching Flesh & Stone to get Artic Armor ? Im a bit afraid to lose a reliable source of blind.

Gratz

I saw someone on reddit advocating for using blind jewel with 3-4% chance to blind on hit to replace F&S blind. I have to say do that if you really want to put yourself in a losing gamble. I discussed something similar a while ago, so let me just bring it back (with some math)

Let's say you have 6 pods each of which rolls its dice independently, and the init arrow has its own roll. So, the chance to blind on hit with your 4% jewel is:

Chance to not blind on hit = 0.96^7 = 75%
Chance to blind on hit: 1 - 0.75 = 25%

So you only have 25% to blind on hit with a 4% chance jewel. This is a very inefficient way to get enemies blind.

Your BR can blind as well, but again, with 4% it's not reliable.

Instead, you can do like what I specified in our IR tree (even if you don't spec onto IR): get Silent Steps via Thread of Hope that grants 10% chance to blind on hit. So, your chance to blind is:
1 - 0.9^7 = 52%