[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

* Assassin Blade Flurry T1 now.

* BV Pathfinder shredded.

* Ancestral Warchief still good.

* CoC Cospri's effectively killed (when compared to other skills)

* Poison got buffed (dafuq?) for those who were using reduced / less duration modifiers (same poison now applies faster).

* Totem meta in full force. RAT buffed, totems in general buffed on the tree, Scorching Ray buffed.

* Possible Raider Cyclone meta as well.


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For those wanting to discuss patch notes here, feel free. No need to spoiler it.

"

Serleth wrote:

* Assassin Blade Flurry T1 now.

* BV Pathfinder shredded.

* Ancestral Warchief still good.

* CoC Cospri's effectively killed (when compared to other skills)

* Poison got buffed (dafuq?) for those who were using reduced / less duration modifiers (same poison now applies faster).

* Totem meta in full force. RAT buffed, totems in general buffed on the tree, Scorching Ray buffed.

* Possible Raider Cyclone meta as well.


**********

For those wanting to discuss patch notes here, feel free. No need to spoiler it.

Good patch note summary.

My overall impression about Caustic Arrow magic-find is that it's going to be pretty much in the same shape for Breach as it was for Essence - tremendous at magic find with strong clear speed but lacking in overall damage to make it good for the strongest bosses. Moreover, I think that it will be very good at clearing Breach mobs due to its ability to cover huge swaths of ground with damage dealing CA clouds. After all, CA has always enjoyed pretty good clear speed - with a ton of white/blue/yellow mobs spawning in close proximity once a breach opens, I really think that CA will shine for these encounters.
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Blight - damage buffed by 35% or so.

Just looking at DPS numbers - a 20-stack Blight with the damage buff looks really good at level 20 - extremely good.

To leverage this high DPS - stacking duration and cast speed will be necessary - maybe a dual/tripple totem approach to let multiple totems cooperate in applying the 20-limit Blight "layers" will be good too - you'll still want a Wither totem into the mix though so that may be a bit tricky.

Still - raw numbers look promising for Blight.

The biggest problem for Blight is that its AOE is really bad. For pack clearing my inclination is to try corpse explosion - if that's as strong as ignite proliferation (I'm dubious of this but without actually trying it out with a real build I won't know for sure - actually I'm very dubious, because even if you managed to get corpses to explode, they only deal 25% of their life as damage - meaning that 4 corpses would need to explode to kill a mob of equal health - without an AOE boost, most mobs in a pack will not take any damage from Blight itself and will thus be at full health once corpses start exploding - add to this, that corpse explosion is not a proliferation mechanic - ignite by comparison can deal much more damage than the initial hit and it proliferates with this same very high damage to any mob within range which, once dead, also proliferates - I don't hold out much hope for corpse explosion to fix Blight's AOE problems) - then Blight could well be a viable and interesting skill.

One possible fix for Blight's AOE problems is to weapon switch, maybe into CA for clearing packs - not ideal as you'd lose all those slots which could otherwise be used for leveling gems - and you'd need more gear - and weapon switching isn't really something I enjoy - and finally, it detracts from the play style - if you like Blight you'd probably not like switching to CA for most of a map and then switching to Blight just for bosses - much better to somehow use Blight at all times if possible.

CI-Occultist-Blight, stacking cast speed and skill duration, probably with Obliteration Wand(s) - not sure if the explosion chance stacks - that could be really fun and really high damage. But it could also be terrible in practice - I'd need to actually test it and fine tune it to come up with a really good build assuming that a good Blight build is even possible. I'll probably try Blight in Breach - my first toon though will be a non-meta CI-Assassin-Crit DD using Trap-Cluster Traps-Multiple Traps-Desecrate for corpse generation with Sunblast and 2 Cheap Construction jewels for instant trap detonation coupled with Vaal DD to one-shot any single phase boss. Even sans Vaal DD cheesing, I think that this build will still be very strong against bosses due to ignite (though ignite immune bosses will pose a problem - Vaal DD though should limit problem encounters to multi-phase bosses which are ignite immune - Uber Atziri? - not sure what else if anything).

Anyhow, my overall take on Breach - the league is pretty much same ol', same ol' - high damage skills with fast clear speed are going to be great; CI will be very strong; builds incorporating poison or ignite will be much stronger in general than builds that do not leverage these mechanics; CA magic find still very strong but still not good for the toughest bosses.

I tried in standard a juggernaut build for uber lab and it works verry verry good.

in new leage i found the golem build ziggi show today a nice idea.

but i will try mathils blade flurry because it seems to be a good decission for my playstyle. I dont like summoner and pet playstile really.

and geering seems pretty easy what i saw in the video from mathil

after reeding hanks post a comment to this.

i enjoyt ca for 2 leages now and its exactly my playstyle. But i hate ca for uber lab
and high dmg bosses. And i cant kill 3 of the guardians simply to be not good enought and
thats the same i had many problems with traps in lab and with uber itzaro.

With the juggernaut build its a joke. only the itzaro thing who you must derupt the stacks, what is a little dump if you dont kill him fast enought your one shot, still with kaoms and 7,5 k life.

This leage it try to kill the lords myself and try a build what i hope can do this.
And weapon swap isnt a thing i like.

I've kind of always wanted to do a Jugg @ich, but just don't have the patience to be levelling new characters all the time.

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I'm debating between two setups for Cyclone, because I generally enjoy the skill and the new melee range makes me want to try it out again.

Also, fairly easy to swap to Reave or Blade Flurry if I'm not satisfied.

I've come up with two trees for it.





Both trees are fairly similar and plan on using QoTF, the central difference being that Raider goes more straight up into direct damage output while adding some extra charges compared to the Assassin build, which focuses more heavily on dealing DoT from the rapid hits.

Likely to start with Bino's and work up to an Ambusher for both setups, with Rat's Nest, Great Old One's Ward, and rares in the rest of the slots.

I might end up tweaking the Raider to go poison as well if I happen to complete a Voidheart prophecy on my own, but we'll see.

First I gotta decide which one I want to run with first. I already know Poison is OP-AF, so it's likely I'm going to start with Assassin, but the sheer loveliness of the movespeed from QoTF + Onslaught seems delicious too.

Any thoughts on which you'd prefer? Faster movement and straight-up dps, or slower movement but poison loveliness?

"

Serleth wrote:

...
Any thoughts on which you'd prefer? Faster movement and straight-up dps, or slower movement but poison loveliness?

I vote QotF, but I like that chest armor a little too much. Also helping to push the vote this way is the immunity on some of the end game bosses. I'd rather have consistent damage output vs all content, than be reminded immunity was a balance decision.

Hi Serlet

Thats the reason i did it in standart. I had a lvl 87 marauder so i did the jugg. For Lab its great. And in stadard i have a legacy voidhard that ring rocks.

for the new leage i have the same tree like you. thats really funny. Only startpoint for me is shadow, not ranger. But i took the ranger life eva point also. only the starting point i missed.

so its great to have some feedback. And youre always so much faster then i that i can ask you for bosses and challanges :-). til monday i will try then i am 2 weeks in holiday.
so i come back christmas.

Well it'll be the first time I've gone melee in a long time so it'll be interesting to see how it handles bosses.

Serleth, hankin, if you played CA in Essence, did you do all 40 challenges by yourself (meaning killing Shaper and the Guardians with CA) or did someone carry you? Just curious.

BTW, I played Ancestral Warchief in Essence and I now know I prefer DPS to MF, so not gonna roll CA anymore, but I love the community in this thread so much that I can't help but follow what's happening here :) I hope you don't mind.

Friend of mine gave me the Shaper kill (could've done it myself), but the end-game grinds challenges, guardians, Shaper etc. I did not do with CA.

I rolled a T-Shot poison build to get those done myself.

You're always welcome here, Jadran. As you know by now we don't restrict our discussions to CA so feel free to pop in here with OT stuff anytime you want.

Not that it matters for CA, but did everyone catch the Facebreakers nerf in the notes?