[3.11] Scourge Arrow with poison flavor - (Sirus A8 - fast maps - Uber Elder - Blighted Maps)

Waiting for the Patchnotes

WE can get Wind Dancer without the Brutal Restraint jewel.

To understand the damage scaling of this build, you just have to understand how poison damage works:

Poison is a damaging ailment, that is applied by both physical and chaos damage. It lasts unmodifyied for 2 seconds and deals 20% of the base damage that applied it as chaos damage. Each target can have multiple applications or stacks of poison.

This means, we can have the following points of increasing the damage of poison:
1. Increase the duration of the poison
2. Increase the damage of the poison
3. Increase the damage of the event that applied the poison
4. Be a pathfinder and use flasks
As a pathfinder we have a 40% chance that poisons inflict 100% more damage during flask effects. Combined with the passive recovery of flasks, even when we don't kill anything, it should be almost all the time active.

Our defense relies on layering multiple defense mechanics to negate most of the damage, while lowering damage that passes though.

This build is a high evasion build, because we start in the ranger area of the tree. In addition to that, Acrobatics and Phase Acrobatics are close by other things that we need, therefore we gladly pick up the Attack and Spell Dodge.

We use a slightly higher level CWDT Immortal Call setup to mitigate bigger hits that pass by our chance based defenses.

Because we are a Pathfinder, we have a pseudo immunity against elemental ailments. Master Alchemist provides that bonus during flask effects, which we can keep active permanently.

We also make use of Wind Dancer. In 3.10 you have to take a Brutal Restraint jewel to transform a keystone into Wind Dancer. In 3.11 it should be included in the tree, so it is cheaper and earlier available, if it get put into the right position.

Wind Dancer let's you take less Damage if you have not been hit in the last 4 seconds and boosts your evasion if you have been hit in the last 4 seconds.

Divine Flesh converts 50% of elemental damage taken into chaos damage and boosts the maximum chaos resistance. Since we anyways stack chaos resistance higher than elemental resistance and convert physical damage taken into chaos damage, we gain a lot of defence from this jewel.

If you can afford it, you can include Tailwind and Elusive by using Hunter and Redeemer influenced boots.

Elusive is a buff which gives us additional chance to dodge as well as movementspeed, but it looses it's strength over the duration of it's effect.
Tailwind on the other hand gives you 10% more action speed. Since we have to load up our attack, I include action speed as defense, because it makes it easier to stay mobile.

Scourge arrow is a channeling bow skill which generates up to 5 spore pods which shoot secondary projectiles. The longer you channel the more damage each individual shot will do and the more spore pods you will spawn.
Now consider that a faster bow will load up quicker, therefore you massively benefit from having a fast attack speed, because you reach faster maximum charges, therefore you will do faster the maximum damage and shoot even more spore pods.
Once you have some equipment you don't even need to fully charge it for mapping to clear screenwide. I suggest you start playing around a bit with how less charge up to you can come away during mapping.

Now since the basic is set, we have to come to the biggest downside of this attack.
Walls and other objectives can prevent the spore pods to spawn and therefore negate a lot of your damage.
To prevent this you should try out the "minimum effective distance" to still spawn all spore pods or consider to shoot parallel to a wall.

For tougher targets like the bosses you want to aim behind the boss to spawn spore pods in front and behind him to maximize thorn arrow usage.

Multiple Projectiles bahave a bit different with this attack than with others.
You will still spawn the same amount of spore pods, but they are divided between your primary shots.
Your attack will spread out in a V pattern if your number of projectiles is even you will not have a centered shot.
If you consider playing with multiple projectiles because you recycle equipment from another character keep this in mind.
For some players having a V pattern can make bossing easier, as you can with a bit of practice spawn the spore pods even more efficient around him.

In my personal opinion I advise against using multiple projectiles.

We choose the Pathfinder for multiple reasons which will be explained with each node.

1. Nature's Reprisal - It provides you with increased chaos damage and enables the spread of poisons, while you have flasks active. It's a massive clear speed boost.
2. Master Toxicist - You get a bit of physical to chaos conversion, extra damage as chaos damage, the Agony Crawler looses stacks slower and your poisons have a chance to deal 100% more damage during flask effects.
3. Nature's Boon - Passive recovery of flasks is massive. Other points in the skilltree even increase this node, so in the end it is even more than 3 charges per tick. The reduced elemental damage taken is a nice touch.
4. Master Alchemist - Provides us with immunity to elemental ailments during flask effects. This enables us to use more unique flasks without having to worry for ailments.

If you play SSF and have not yet have access to some unique flasks it is a consideration to pick up Nature's Adrenaline as alternative. You can still swap Ascendancy nodes for 5 Orbs of Regret.

Kill them all!

You can directly go for the endgame version of the build, there is no seperate leveling tree.

Here is a Path of Building route, if you want to play around it yourself:


1. For leveling purposes we first go for Finesse, then we pick up Toxic Strikes, Farsight and Thick Skin.
2. Then we travel through Herbalism to Swift Venoms, while picking up one Mana Leech node for later, as I always forget to get later mana recovery.
3. We pick up Master Fletcher and the Acrobatics Cluster and travel then to the Shadow starting area, while picking up relevant nodes.
4. We pick up the good nodes in the Shadow Area of the tree and take flask nodes in the ranger area.
5. We travel to Bravery and after that we pick life and flask nodes in the Scion area.
6. We can use a Brutal Restraint to transform Perfect Agony to Wind Dancer, also we should pick up the mana reservation reduction, if we do not have a level 4 enlighten by now. After that we most likely pick up remaining health nodes.

The pantheon is still personal choice.

For the major pantheon the choice is between the Soul of Lunaris for further defensives or the Soul of the Brine King to prevent yourself from being stun locked.

For the minor pantheon, we should take Soul of Shakari, if we are using Darkscorn. The reduced chaos damage taken helps with defenses.
Alternatively I suggest Abbarath for immunity to burning ground and Rhyslata, for flask recovery when bossing.

The build works already on just leveling items. But why stop there? Here are my suggestions for the endgame and some alternatives for people that prefer crafting.

Weapon Slot


Quiver


Helmet


Chest


Gloves


Belt


Boots


Rings


Amulet


Jewels


Flasks


Anointments


My gear at the end of 3.10

If the mana reservation is too high in the beginning, you have to leave some auras inactive.

Chest 6-Link


Gloves 4-Link


4-Link


2+2-Link


5-Link Weapon

Normally I do not really do this section, but since you get Scourge Arrow at level 28 I wanted to include a way to get there for newer players.

Act 1 (1-12)


Act 2+3 (13-27)


Level 28+

to be added

15.09.2020 Why did I forget to include Divine Flesh?
15.09.2020 Updated forgotten Bandits
10.06.2020 Created Guide

Insert the items as icons