[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

Sorry for the noob question, but you all mention dual totems. What do you mean? IIRC, two totems are available only if you take Ancestral Bond keystone, which is way too far from our skill path. Is there some other way to use 2 totems at once?

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Jadran wrote:

A Warband Leader - hmm, only from Zana mods and then we have to get super lucky?
1000 kills in a Rampage chain - I hate these, I don't know how well CA can handle them.

Anyway, I'm going for 40/40 this time!

This, and the Beyond bosses, are the only two challenges I don't like.

Twinned's annoying as piss, but I'm going to try do it myself this league, specifically the Abyss boss.

And I'm going to try to do it with this build.

Cuz there's going to be some serious Ninja Guitars wailing in the background as I do it. =)

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hankinsohl wrote:

T15 Colosseum actually isn't too hard

The map itself is fine, Ambrius is deadly AF. I can do single Ambrius with this build, but not twinned. Too many spinning sword spells. Maybe if I respecced into IR, I could manage it.

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ChronoExile wrote:

I am planning on dropping the three dexterity nodes to the right of Sentinel.

On a quick scan once the JSON was released, this was the best option I found as well.

I'll do a more comprehensive dig once patch notes are released but this is probably what's going to happen.

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omgree wrote:

Guys, didnt u ever felt this build of the lack of flask charges? Is it good idea for new "free" passives use on Druidic Rite and Primal spirit (4 passives total to go)?

Nope. I've never had a problem with flask charges. If you're having problem with flask charges, it's probably because you're being extremely cautious with your life pool and using your flasks pretty much the moment you lose health.

This is one of the reasons I keep the Catalyzed life flask in my flask bar. For situations that aren't as critical, it allows me to recover life and rebuild the charges on the Seething flasks.

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"OOS nerfed blah spark what?

OOS's nerf doesn't mean anything. We're only using it to amplify the damage of the lightning skill that we use.

As for the spark nerf, just use Lightning Tendrils instead. Still a solid levelling skill. I'll update the levelling section for that.

I anticipate Frost Bolt / Vortex or Nova will end up being the way to level for this league though.

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Serleth wrote:

OOS's nerf doesn't mean anything.

Insofar as OOS wasnt by itself a great leveling skill, yes.

But, insofar as OOS compensated for Spark's lack of near-mob DPS, it does matter. The nerf to OOS killed Spark as a great leveling skill.

I leveled with OOS/Spark in Perandus and honestly didn't notice Orb's damage by level 20. It was all being dealt by Spark.

Either way, swap in Lit Tendrils, which deals enough damage to take out white packs on its own, augment it with the Orb for blue+ and it'll work fine.

For my money, I'm going to try out Frostbolt this league, while leveling FT/Fireball/Firestorm as an alternate option in case it sucks, because I know the fire skills work fine.

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Serleth wrote:

I leveled with OOS/Spark in Perandus and honestly didn't notice Orb's damage by level 20. It was all being dealt by Spark.

Either way, swap in Lit Tendrils, which deals enough damage to take out white packs on its own, augment it with the Orb for blue+ and it'll work fine.

For my money, I'm going to try out Frostbolt this league, while leveling FT/Fireball/Firestorm as an alternate option in case it sucks, because I know the fire skills work fine.

Yup... tried Spark/OOS post-nerf - and OOS didn't seem to do much at all.

And this was on one of my first characters in the league with crap gear.

While Spark was great for killing a bunch of stuff (lot's of experience), it sucked big time for rapidly killing bosses and/or stuff near you. I leveled a Decoy Totem at this time - which I had to frequently deploy to avoid getting overrun.

Growing tired of this, I switched to dual totem - which I found to be massively better.

With Spark/OOS/Decoy Totem - I often found myself staring out with Spark/OOS, then casting Decoy Totem, and then running for my life as stuff didn't die fast enough. Leveling wasn't optimal at all.

But later in the league with good leveling uniques available, Spark might be much better - it certainly can hit a bunch of mobs.

But, each to his or her own - favorite leveling skills are a personal preference :-)

The issue for me is going over to Ancestral Bond and then respeccing everything out. And yeah, FT + SB is solid but I still find it lacklustre without being able to drop the additional FT.

I love cold skills though, I did a 40k dps Chaos Nova build in Talisman by doing 100% conversion Cold > Fire > Chaos and it was raaaaaaaaaad. Not the fastest, but super fun to play.

So I'm hoping that Frostbolt + Vortex / Ice Nova will be similarly interesting. Chaos conversion will be more difficult with the changes but I might still end up trying it just for all the purple.

Sorry if the question is noobish, but i want to know about mechanic

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Piercing: Piercing Caustic Arrow Projectiles will cause additional clouds each time they hit and will receive the chaos damage bonus any time they impact an enemy, but multiple overlapping clouds will not cause additional debuffs.

How does this damage scales? And damage only apply to the arrow not to cloud? Each time it will pierce dmg will scale more and more? How does arrow dmg calculate (not cloud), is its rly worth having additional arrow?
For phys dmg bonus CA should be insert only in weapon?

Ok, totems are defenetly good, but speaking about leveling, what about ED+contagion?

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omgree wrote:

Sorry if the question is noobish, but i want to know about mechanic

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Piercing: Piercing Caustic Arrow Projectiles will cause additional clouds each time they hit and will receive the chaos damage bonus any time they impact an enemy, but multiple overlapping clouds will not cause additional debuffs.

How does this damage scales? And damage only apply to the arrow not to cloud? Each time it will pierce dmg will scale more and more? How does arrow dmg calculate (not cloud), is its rly worth having additional arrow?
For phys dmg bonus CA should be insert only in weapon?

We're only dealing cloud damage, not arrow damage.

But, with Drillneck, Pierce chance also applies as projectile damage, which DOES apply to the cloud.

Without Drillneck, we wouldn't get the damage benefit. So what Pierce + Drillneck does for us is provide both the Pierce conversion into Projectile damage, and then whenever the arrow pierces, it drops another cloud, which effectively provides us with additional AoE.

To that effect, Deadeye giving us the additional arrow not only provides greater AoE on its own, but it also provides more opportunities for pierce to occur, thus dropping more clouds.

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omgree wrote:

Ok, totems are defenetly good, but speaking about leveling, what about ED+contagion?

I don't like the mechanics of ED / Contagion at all, so I haven't properly tested it for levelling. I find it slow early on (used it up to about level 40) and didn't like it, so I stopped.

Someone else will have to chime in here to provide a more thorough experience.