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Cool build ! Thanks for sharing :-)

How dependant on medium CJ stacking would you say this build is ?
How would you rank this build if GGG:
- Completely removes CJ in 3.11
- Forbids allocating more than 1 each CJ passive in 3.11

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thomzon wrote:

Cool build ! Thanks for sharing :-)

How dependant on medium CJ stacking would you say this build is ?
How would you rank this build if GGG:
- Completely removes CJ in 3.11
- Forbids allocating more than 1 each CJ passive in 3.11

I would say this build really depends on the cluster jewels to make up the damage, without them you will lose against trickster.

so for your other 2 question
1. GGG will not remove CJ, as it just doesn't makes sense if they removed one of the mehcanics they spent months on it. Though it is not 100% guaranteed, the chances is very high that they will not remove it. But if they do (which is most likely won't), this build will be quite weak.

2. So basically disabling cluster jewel stacking, well I hope not, there are some chances of this might happen but if it does, we would be almost half of our damage if this happens.

Yeah it is a new way to scale Toxic Rain but it is also quite vulnerable to these types of nerfs

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Remicaster1 wrote:

Our damage won trickster with +3 bow as seen in the video, why?
This is because pathfinder have 50% increased area with chaos skills, increasing our overlapping damage. With Pathfinder's Nature's Adrenaline, we will have a lot more movement speed and attack speed compared to Trickster.

How about defenses? Compared to trickster, we have perma fortify via Hardened Scars, 20% less damage on Wind Dancer and Elemental Ailment immunity, vs Ghost Shroud and life recovery on kill, our mitigation is better than Trickster.

Let me start by saying I'm not a "pathfinder stinks" guy. I love the ascendancy, think it has great synergy with TR, and I think this guide, like all of yours, is one of the most well written and comprehensive guides for any build I've seen.

My only nitpick is with the comparison video you posted. Looking at the PoBs you posted in the descriptions, the Pathfinder has 2 cluster setups whereas the Trickster only has 1. That gives your Pathfinder almost 50% more duration of the TR. The +1 gem level Carcass Jack also helps mitigate a lot of the benefit of the +3 bow vs. Quill Rain. You also don't curse the boss with the Trickster outside of Witchfire Brew. Don't get me wrong, the kill speed with PF is great enough to stand alone, and it proves that pathfinder is perfectly viable in its own right (enough to silence the haters). But using corrupt Carcass Jack, +1 arrow Quill Rain, not having a curse setup with the Trickster, and using an extra cluster setup with the Pathfinder and then labeling it "not min maxed PF vs near min maxed Trickster" feels like a bit of an oversell.

I don't know if it's possible to produce a perfect side by side comparison that will please everybody. Everyone will always be able to nitpick something. I think the choice just comes down to personal preference.

Yeah i know something like that will eventually happen but not yet. Comparison videos is almost impossible to make it fair on this game.

When I experimented on Shaper, I found the timing insanely hard to caught when the shaper literally have immune phase + immune phase on top of another immune phase, which mean Sirus is just a dead comparison too. I know eventually someone will nitpick on those points, just a matter of time

I do understand your point of view on the comparison, but here is the "behind the scene"


Ok end of all of those "nonsense behind the scene". But at the end comparisons, no matter how fair they are, people will still find some "unmentioned" parts on the video and nitpick left and right, you are true about it is just impossible to satisfy everyone.

I think i did said that the Trickster is a generic TR that is built from those popular TR guides, and my current setup on my tr is considered their final min maxed version

Hey! Nice guide, it seems toxic rain is getting popular, there's been quite a few new pop ups this league about it.

I remember you from the delving guide, that was really nice because we've all seen the emergent "1hp" playstyle in delve but there wasn't a clear, exhaustive guide explaining how to replicate it, especially in the post-dex-stacking-nerf world where cold scourge arrow got dunked on.

You have really nice and clear formatting, which is a great advantage over builds that are either wall of text or barebones pastebin + gear + links.

First thing is you have a typo in your wither setup, I imagine it should be faster casting (it says wither twice atm).

Second, I'm wondering why would you pick nature's adrenaline over master toxicist, you already have tons of attack speed from quill rain, onslaught flask and various other mods, meanwhile master toxicist is 10% more chaos damage, not multiplier or w/e else has problem with diminishing returns.

Third, how sturdy is this build? I see there are some extra defensives incorporated like deshret jewel and fortify anointment, but on the other hand flasks are all dps options or fortify enabler, and cwdt immortal call I imagine is just baseline effectiveness, no endurance charges are used in this build right?

Tbh a lot of tricksters variants ARE glass cannon so this might be even a defensive improvement over them, especially the one that started the meme "pathfinder sucks, don't play it" because it was the ONLY guide I found for toxic rain back in Legion league when I played TR. I still played it as PF anyway, but there was no other guide except some poison-based ones which are only creating confusion for inexperienced players (I fell into that trap too), I don't think TR is even the best skill for poison bows, ROA (for HoAg scaling) or scourge is probably better.

I respect that guy for having the only decent TR chaos dot guide around when there weren't other ones (there was a totem one and maybe mines?), but I disagree with several of his choices like Queen of the Forest and no life flask in main setup? Is that like... a mapping only build?

Keep in mind that was the era when Quill Rain still had 40% penalty instead of current 30% and Vicious Projectiles elder bows were possible to make so having a 7-link was clearly beneficial.

Still I think I know what video guide you're relaying as it was discussed in rlauren2 trickster's thread. To achieve comparable numbers you will need double corrupted chest and those are in limited supply and when I checked, they cost 40ex+. Yes, yours is only 1 corrupt out of 2 good so it was 15ex but still if you want to "truly min max" you need a double +gem corruption.

You can self-craft a bow for around 7-8ex in mats that is probably like 80-90% efficiency of the "perfect 35ex bow" and that's the true advantage of going +gem bow over corrupted chest, it's cheaper for people who are more casual players and don't produce hundreds if not thousands of exalts within the span of the league. And let's be honest, people who can get couple of mirrors in the first month of the league don't need guides anyway... unless they got them through sheer luck of drop and not deep knowledge of the game (like crafting for profit).

Personally I'm not sure why would people pump 200ex into toxic rain or essence drain, there are much better scaling builds out there if you have this levels of currency, but to each their own.

So yes, helmet enchants are one of these "extremely overpriced for its benefit" types of upgrades. Especially for toxic rain where the most impactful is something like +1 extra arrow (requiring more investment into aoe scaling to make up for it and is mostly QoL), this is not molten strike / volatile dead / tornado shot / scourge arrow where helmet enchant is actually VERY impactful. People pay for it though, so the prices reflect it.

Same as paying for 21/23 gem over 21/0 even though all it does is add some minuscule aoe radius that will drown in all other aoe increases the build has.

I think the -9 res helmets after the fossil nerf just became much more "luxurious" than before when it was a given any build that can utilize them and doesn't require 100% a unique, will slap them in. Getting that, or correct base for it (85+ hunter influenced or wasting a hunter's orb) and with correct enchant became a chase item that's more pricey than it's really worth. Yes, it is damage upgrade, no, it's friggin' not worth the cost.

So I think considering alternatives like your Devoto or tricksters that run with Vertex are just fine.

The ornate quiver base is also that form of "luxury", I saw on reddit methods to copy them with beastcrafting, but it's still a base that cannot normally drop and afaik is produced from bricking maloney's that are 5ex a pop mid league and easily 10ex+ early league. So yeah, sucks to have to pay so much just to have 1 extra socket.

To sum it up, I think the whole PF vs Trickster debate is a bit of a moot point, both are fine to play and both can be played either with +3 bow or with double corrupted chest but the bow is much more accessible. While "min maxed trickster" has a lot of overpriced pieces, I'd say this version does so as well, just in other areas.

Personally I'm not a fan of Quill Rain because if you take non corrupted Carcass Jack and either Quill Rain or some 20c self made essence bow, the damage will probably be the same or slightly better on Quill Rain if you stand and attack, but you have to shoot 2-3 more times to achieve the same damage as with 1 cast from the other setup.

Map clear in a situation where mobs don't die from 1 instance of TR is very annoying, until you get enough gear that you can 1-shot them even with Quill Rain (and then it'll be faster as you'll have much faster animations) it's fairly frustrating, I remember trying to time alva incursion or legion monoliths and the delay of the skill encourages you to shoot and run and leave them to die from the skill duration, but if you didn't calculate it well and the mobs survived at 5% life then yeah, fail. I'm talking about gearing up situation.

Also about the cluster jewel situation, I think both setups (yours vs standard trickster) gain the same from cluster jewels. I don't see how one class would gain more from them than another. The only difference being that you went for the bow large cluster and most trickster's builds go for chaos cluster. The only reason for that is bow wheel has no great 3rd option for a notable, best option is one that gives 6% attack speed and some useless stats (martial prowess) and the other options are even worse. Meanwhile unholy grace + wicked pall on a large has nothing wasted, all good stats, and for the 3rd one you can get 10% damage taken by mob (basically another 1,5 withered stack for free) or 30% increased chaos damage.

TL:DR Nice guide but I'm not sold on the original idea that requires corrupted chest for good damage numbers. It's the same conundrum essence drain builds face "do I go bow, or do I go wand + shield + skin of the loyal / corrupted shavs", the second setup will reach better damage but for much higher cost and risk unavailability of the important dps components.

P.S. Do you bother with any sources of frenzy charges? Only thing that I never managed to find elegant solution for on toxic rain builds are reliable sources of frenzy charges because "maloneys with frenzy socketed in it" just doesn't work for me, when I play a "no aim required" build like TR I don't wanna have to worry where that frenzy arrow shoots and have it miss half the time on bosses. Plus maloney's is expensive and has underwhelming stats outside of the sockets it provides.

First of all I would like to give a thanks for your compliment on the guide :>, and thanks for notifying me those typo mistakes in there.

(Second) : The reason I picked Nature's Adrenaline is because it just gives a lot of QoL on both offense and defense (able to run around faster), increase clearing speed (cus movement speed) and a hidden scaling that it also scales the Mirage Archer dps, which a lot of people neglected about. But yeah I will still conduct an experiment on this because a video proves more than simple words

(Third) : I would say it is quite sturdy, if you have seen the Uber Elder video, you could see me tanking one shaper ball and still have like 40% hp left where some builds it is immediate one shot. On clearing wise I have anti stun from the mana flask which prevents me from getting stun in most situation, with the help of ailment immunity, reduce dmg and wind dancer evade, quite impossible to die (tbh I haven't got the experience where I actually died to map monsters), mostly died to Sirus cus his fight is just a joke and I actually start to hate it.

About the +3 bow stuff and the Quill Rain, I have a small clip made for you, here is the answers for your question. This testing is done on modless, yes completely modless Phoenix fight

https://streamable.com/ov180d

Also about the +4 Carcass. I think a lot of people, including you, felt discourage when the build requires a corruption result. Let's say a +1 Power charge Diadem, most people will be like "oh man it needs rng" and they be like.. no, just no. I respect on your opinion on hating that kind of stuff because we all have different opinions, including this build which is built out from a different way, which is almost the same as a "different opinion on scaling the damage"

Also speaking, the -9 helmet is just overrated, it is not as good as it seems as you don't always stand close to bosses like Phoenix charge up, you don't stand right next to him. People though "oh it's the -9 helmet it must be superior" but it is just, nothing much as proven in the comparison

Yeah the Ornate quiver is quite difficult to get, let alone the stats I have on my quiver so my apologies for not really explaining well enough. It just an endgame option when you have the money, and it is not mandatory (i know that you know about it), it's just letting people know this kind of stuff existed, like I doubt most people know you can even roll Enduring on Hybrid flask.

I mean, if you are not a fan of Quill Rain i completely respect that, but when a new player goes looking on a "bow build" what would be the first type of gear they look on? Usually it's the bow right? Same goes to the melee builds, the first thing they will usually look is the weapons right? So the Bow is kinda the "face" of the build, when you let them see like, let's say a 100ex bow, they will be like "oh damn what should I do to get that", encouraging them to do the impossible. So here I am offering a 1 alch or 1c bow that can do the endgame content just completely fine. If you dislike the Quill Rain I can't force you to like that bow either, so again, I respect your opinion on there.

Trickster is not the best ascendancy, there are others as I've mentioned, like Pathfinder, Necromancer and Ascendant (yes, max block attack speed ascendant variant). And NONE of them are the best, the best one is the one you found the most comfortable and enjoyable playing with. But other than PF and Trick, most people doesn't even attempt to experiment with them (I don't because I don't have the GPU for it)

During the early stages mapping, even Trickster will still have some troubles on 1 tapping the monsters anyway, but as PF + Quill rain has faster attack speed which makes mapping smoother in general (though at the end it is still down to one's preference).

About the frenzy charge stuff, the only other method I found is via Elegant Hubris, 10% chance to gain frenzy on hit, which is quite strong but it doesn't offer any good defensive options. As a guy who likes balancing out stuff, I don't really like those kind of stuff that requires you to drop a lot of survivability.

tldr I do agree most of the stuff you say, some of them I stay neutral on because mostly it is personal's opinion and preference. I don't really have any major disagreement on your statement above.

PS : The moment I decided to write this guide, i know i am stepping into something extremely controversial and I am prepared to deal with it xd

It's nice to see another Pathfinder build. Congratz OP.

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Viktranka wrote:

P.S. Do you bother with any sources of frenzy charges? Only thing that I never managed to find elegant solution for on toxic rain builds are reliable sources of frenzy charges because "maloneys with frenzy socketed in it" just doesn't work for me, when I play a "no aim required" build like TR I don't wanna have to worry where that frenzy arrow shoots and have it miss half the time on bosses. Plus maloney's is expensive and has underwhelming stats outside of the sockets it provides.

I wonder if a quiver with +25% chaos dot multiplier and chance to gain frenzy charge on hitting a rare/unique monster would be better than OP's quiver? Or your attack speed is already too high that getting more AS multiplier would not significantly be better than raw +17% dot multiplier? I guess my question is about +17% dot multiplier in OP's current quiver vs. a quiver with (+12% more multiplier and +12% AS more multiplier).


[theorycraft]Replace stun avoidance suffix with +AS to have luxury end-game quiver.