[3.16][HC][ON BREAK] Caustic Arrow Raider, DoT Focused | Tanky | 6k+ Health | All Content | In-depth

Thanks for the answer, now about this part:

"

DankawSL wrote:

Steelskin doesn't need long duration, that 1 second is enough to react and save yourself in one way or another. Old IC had even shorter duration (~0.7 sec?) but nobody complained about it.

I think nobody complained because it was effective at very low rank (what was the common setup? CWDT 1 IC 3 I think?) and mostly automated to prevent "1 shots from multiple simultaneous hits", so not "true 1 shots" just a lot of damage in small time frame. People didn't need to react as it was automated.

Steelskin seems to be designed around manual input rather than CWDT "lazy" setup because at every comparable level you will absorb less damage with procced steelskin than you need to take first to the face to pass the required CWDT threshold.

I understand the idea to reward players with fast reflexes rather than making skills work in the background without any thought or input. I just wish there was an equivalent of Vaal Molten Shell for evasion / ES characters and not only armor stackers.

I don't think armor is better than evasion, but Vaal Molten Shell is better than other defensive skills and it only works for armor stacking characters. I feel much safer having that 27k+ buffer while fighting legions, but to obtain it I had to choose a path that might have been sub-optimal otherwise.

"

DankawSL wrote:

For those who didn't see my death yet

I'm honestly sad. Not angry, just sad at all the RNG factors that killed me and could potentially prevent it.

Tough RIP man. OP Legion SLAM! reminds me of running away from them while leveling.

"

DankawSL wrote:

I don't really care about the rank, level 100 is my goal since... Incursion i guess? Or Delve, i don't know. This time i truly wanted to hit it since Raider's rework is imminent. (unofficial info ahead)
GGG wanted to do rework this league, but withdrawn from the idea shortly before the release - that's why Raider had no changes at all this league. I also heard that in that rework more evade chance was removed from it... hence my character's name.

Hopefully next league Raider gets buffed (more like a well-rounded class for melee and bow builds), i just hate people saying that Raider sucks, i think it is balanced and enjoyable QoL+defensive wise especially CA Raider, although I know other ascendancies(Trickster/PF/Deadeye/Slayer) can do better than Raider offensively.

DontNerfEvadeRaiderPls :D

I love this build guide, thank you it's gotten me back into an old skill that I love

First time PoE player here, so please be gentle..

I'm now level 85 and managed to get a hall of GM map..

I have a question about the Hall of Grand Masters thing, I am pretty much following this build, and in the guide it says to use scorching ray.

Isn't the entire build built around chaos damage though? so how can we get the damage from scorching ray without specialising in fire damage?

Can someone please help by showing me what gear you used to clear it?

Thanks,

"

Viktranka wrote:

Spoiler

Thanks for the answer, now about this part:

"

DankawSL wrote:

Steelskin doesn't need long duration, that 1 second is enough to react and save yourself in one way or another. Old IC had even shorter duration (~0.7 sec?) but nobody complained about it.

I think nobody complained because it was effective at very low rank (what was the common setup? CWDT 1 IC 3 I think?) and mostly automated to prevent "1 shots from multiple simultaneous hits", so not "true 1 shots" just a lot of damage in small time frame. People didn't need to react as it was automated.

Steelskin seems to be designed around manual input rather than CWDT "lazy" setup because at every comparable level you will absorb less damage with procced steelskin than you need to take first to the face to pass the required CWDT threshold.

I understand the idea to reward players with fast reflexes rather than making skills work in the background without any thought or input. I just wish there was an equivalent of Vaal Molten Shell for evasion / ES characters and not only armor stackers.

I don't think armor is better than evasion, but Vaal Molten Shell is better than other defensive skills and it only works for armor stacking characters. I feel much safer having that 27k+ buffer while fighting legions, but to obtain it I had to choose a path that might have been sub-optimal otherwise.

Yes, IC was incredibly good regardless if you used endurance charges or not. That's why it had to go. Steelskin was created with self-casting in mind, but let's be real - unless you're fighting a boss it might be hard to react in time to make a use of the skill.

Steelskin is obviously a downgrade, but that's what GGG tried to achieve. The skill can still be put in CWDT for extra health, it might save your life.

Molten Shell in general is extremely good to the point of stupidity. The effective life pool you get is simply busted, i don't deny that. What i dislike is period when Molten Shell is down, that makes you extremely vulnerable especially in elemental damage maps. I prefer having previously mentioned setup because it's simply "permanent" and doesn't require a lot of investment to be reasonably tanky, you just get it naturally.

"

Tetrad wrote:

Spoiler

Hopefully next league Raider gets buffed (more like a well-rounded class for melee and bow builds), i just hate people saying that Raider sucks, i think it is balanced and enjoyable QoL+defensive wise especially CA Raider, although I know other ascendancies(Trickster/PF/Deadeye/Slayer) can do better than Raider offensively.

DontNerfEvadeRaiderPls :D

Raider never really sucked. The thing is, since 3.2 it's been a defensive ascendancy more than anything. With overwhelming majority of people playing softcore, they simply don't appreciate that aspect. It's basically the same situation like with Occultist after 3.0 ES nerfs. The class was barely picked in SC but reasonably popular in HC - because it enabled ES builds and increased power of curses that were completely broken back then. It was one of the strongest ascendancies in the game with pick rate lower than 2% (iirc).

Raider is not as broken as Occultist used to be but it's extremely good with tons of QoL rather than raw power. Who cares. You can get ~35% more damage by picking Trickster, therefore it's superior ascendancy right?

GGG will undoubtly buff Raider, but it might be at the cost of defense. Again, look what happened to Occultist. GGG overbuffed it and gave it unnecessary nodes, only to nerf curses and remove broken ES node. From defensive ascendancy to pure damage focused one. Let's be fair, #% more evade is ridiculously broken if built around (like this build does). The history might repeat itself. I'm prepared for the worst.

"

CloudedJudgement wrote:

Spoiler

First time PoE player here, so please be gentle..

I'm now level 85 and managed to get a hall of GM map..

I have a question about the Hall of Grand Masters thing, I am pretty much following this build, and in the guide it says to use scorching ray.

Isn't the entire build built around chaos damage though? so how can we get the damage from scorching ray without specialising in fire damage?

Can someone please help by showing me what gear you used to clear it?

Thanks,

Many builds are incapable of clearing that map. Grandmasters damage is through the roof and some of them are ridiculously tanky and built to screw people who try clear it. Grandmasters are real characters submitted by people who bought the supporter pack (or was it kickstarter reward?), so they also use passive tree and items you can acquire yourself.

Chaos Innoculation is a keystone that makes you immune to chaos damage, quite few grandmasters have it so you NEED some form of non-chaos damage to kill them. Long time ago when i did some tests, Scorching Ray was the best ability to kill them - it's also a DoT, reduces enemy's fire resistance and has very high damage. It might be nerfed now (PvP scaling) so i don't know if you still can finish the map with this build.

Anyway, Balefire unique mace gives level 25 Scorching Ray and decent amount of elemental damage. Simply use that in 2nd weapon slot and switch to it when you have to. Obviously you have to socket support gems inside the mace to increase damage of the active skill. Burning Damage, Efficacy and Infused Channeling should be the strongest.

"

DankawSL wrote:

Molten Shell in general is extremely good to the point of stupidity. The effective life pool you get is simply busted, i don't deny that. What i dislike is period when Molten Shell is down, that makes you extremely vulnerable especially in elemental damage maps. I prefer having previously mentioned setup because it's simply "permanent" and doesn't require a lot of investment to be reasonably tanky, you just get it naturally.

This is maybe a noob question, but how do you know what counts as "attack" and is possible to evade and what counts as "spell" so you cannot?

I assume "elemental damage maps" means things like "monsters do 100% extra damage as fire" and I imagine this is added to both monster's attacks and spells, is that the case?

Rule of thumb, anything that involves a weapon is an attack - be it melee attack or projectile. Everything else is a spell. Some spells might look like an attack because how puny their appearance is (very common in delve) and reversed, but the opposite is less common in general.

Yes, that's what i meant. It was common for people to die to elemental porcupines, some people would just leave the map if that was the case. Now people include at least some avoidance/mitigation to make it possible to survive them... if your build doesn't destroy corpses anyway.

The "monsters do 100% extra damage as fire/cold/light" applies to any physical damage, including spells. It works exactly as "Gain X% physical as X" mods you can find on gear.

I gave in and made a champion version as ive played raider version too much,

my gear isnt on point and is a bit odd with going through my dump tabs lol but man it works, the champion base has a nice feel to it. and one shoting trash keeps it fast and progressive. Highly recommend champion...

"

DankawSL wrote:

Spoiler

Many builds are incapable of clearing that map. Grandmasters damage is through the roof and some of them are ridiculously tanky and built to screw people who try clear it. Grandmasters are real characters submitted by people who bought the supporter pack (or was it kickstarter reward?), so they also use passive tree and items you can acquire yourself.

Chaos Innoculation is a keystone that makes you immune to chaos damage, quite few grandmasters have it so you NEED some form of non-chaos damage to kill them. Long time ago when i did some tests, Scorching Ray was the best ability to kill them - it's also a DoT, reduces enemy's fire resistance and has very high damage. It might be nerfed now (PvP scaling) so i don't know if you still can finish the map with this build.

Anyway, Balefire unique mace gives level 25 Scorching Ray and decent amount of elemental damage. Simply use that in 2nd weapon slot and switch to it when you have to. Obviously you have to socket support gems inside the mace to increase damage of the active skill. Burning Damage, Efficacy and Infused Channeling should be the strongest.

Ok so i bought the balefire staff, and I get that you need support gems..
So my next question is for you, in the case of some weapons it says gems are supported by xxx skill. Since this skill is actually on the weapon, do support gems on the weapon support the weapon itself? Do the support gems on the weapon need to be linked to increase the benefit?

Thanks,

"

DankawSL wrote:

Spoiler

For those who didn't see my death yet

I'm honestly sad. Not angry, just sad at all the RNG factors that killed me and could potentially prevent it.

Damn RIP, that sucks.

-----

So I have another crafting question. The guide recommends crafting increased attack speed to finish off this elder 7L +3 bow:



But I also have the 5-6% damage per frenzy charge craft, does that damage buff affect CA? Seems like it'd be trading a bit of reliability for some extra damage, to rely more on the frenzy charges. If it works it's a tradeoff I'm willing to make! Cheaper recipe too ;)