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

If you don't plan to make it to uber lab and are on HC, is it better to get veil (phasing) or chase (onslaught)?

Also on a related topic, how much better is chase vs just having rapid assault in terms of damage?

I gotta say by looking at the gear I haven't expected much but holy shit was I proven wrong, this build is so fun to play.
It does good damage, it can survive and it's freaking faaaaaast.
Great job.

"

dragonji1 wrote:

I gotta say by looking at the gear I haven't expected much but holy shit was I proven wrong, this build is so fun to play.
It does good damage, it can survive and it's freaking faaaaaast.
Great job.

Yeah I feel the same way now. I got lucky today and picked up a 6L bow in HC and it changed everything. DPS tripled (from 45k to 125k dot damage) and besides that bow and a pair of gloves everything else has been self found on a fresh character who started this league last week.

I still haven't even finished merc lab yet at L86 but T6/7 maps go by quick (I don't have any T8s+ yet). As for merc lab, it's because I'm a total newbie really and I fear traps a lot. Haven't played much PoE since the concept of lab was introduced.

Low yellow tier maps feel pretty safe with 5k hp and max resists (+12% chaos res), but legion rares can be dangerous. I popped 3 of them on a map where they were extra fast and nearly got insta killed.

Highly recommend anyone getting back into PoE to try this build out. I haven't had this much fun since the pre-league legacy low life dual spark totem shav's build.

Hi,

I've just started trying this build and having a lot of fun.

Could you post the latest POB link to your build please.

Well damn, I just died in HC at level 87 in a T8 Necropolis map on a random non-legion rare spider. The map mods had nothing scary. It was an extra monster HP blue map. Safe as it gets.

Can someone help me figure out how I died?

I had my jade flask up, ran into a hallway, saw the spider, right clicked him to cast CA with a 125k DPS CA from about a 1/4th of the screen away. I died within about 200ms of the arrow touching the monster and then it died about 1.5 seconds later after I died. It looked like maybe my health went down in 2 chunks but it was so close to instant it's impossible to tell. I had no debuffs or curses on me and there was nothing that could have detonated corpses.

For reference I'm always at super high attention and didn't do anything stupid (to my knowledge). I have no idea what mods the rare mob had. Up until now pretty much everything except map bosses and legion rares died in 1-2 seconds with 1 cast of CA while my HP barely ever dropped.

My stats were:

- 5.2k HP / 100 ES
- 75/76/75 (77/89/112) resists with 12% chaos resists
- 65% evasion with grace and the Jade flask (49% without the flask)
- Stone sand aura
- Steelskin linked with CWDT (it was available to be used but didn't save me)
- Nearly identical skill tree to the yellow map tier tree by the author

My gear is in the "JustWarmingUp" character if you wanted to double check. I did have Kintsugi. Everything else is assorted rares.

"

antelopesalad wrote:

If you don't plan to make it to uber lab and are on HC, is it better to get veil (phasing) or chase (onslaught)?

Also on a related topic, how much better is chase vs just having rapid assault in terms of damage?

Onslaught is still superior in general. Veil is better against heavy elemental attacks but you won't encounter too many of those.

Damage difference is 0, since the ascendancy is picked purely for defensive and QoL purposes. Increases to attacks don't interact with DoT portion of CA.

"

Sentry001 wrote:

Hi,

I've just started trying this build and having a lot of fun.

Could you post the latest POB link to your build please.

PoB i provide as well as all vital information is updated. You couldn't have missed section with big "Path of Building" banner, could you?

"

antelopesalad wrote:

Spoiler

Well damn, I just died in HC at level 87 in a T8 Necropolis map on a random non-legion rare spider. The map mods had nothing scary. It was an extra monster HP blue map. Safe as it gets.

Can someone help me figure out how I died?

I had my jade flask up, ran into a hallway, saw the spider, right clicked him to cast CA with a 125k DPS CA from about a 1/4th of the screen away. I died within about 200ms of the arrow touching the monster and then it died about 1.5 seconds later after I died. It looked like maybe my health went down in 2 chunks but it was so close to instant it's impossible to tell. I had no debuffs or curses on me and there was nothing that could have detonated corpses.

For reference I'm always at super high attention and didn't do anything stupid (to my knowledge). I have no idea what mods the rare mob had. Up until now pretty much everything except map bosses and legion rares died in 1-2 seconds with 1 cast of CA while my HP barely ever dropped.

My stats were:

- 5.2k HP / 100 ES
- 75/76/75 (77/89/112) resists with 12% chaos resists
- 65% evasion with grace and the Jade flask (49% without the flask)
- Stone sand aura
- Steelskin linked with CWDT (it was available to be used but didn't save me)
- Nearly identical skill tree to the yellow map tier tree by the author

My gear is in the "JustWarmingUp" character if you wanted to double check. I did have Kintsugi. Everything else is assorted rares.

The only dangerous "spider" i know is Stygian Revenant. You can find them in act 4 Belly of the Beast and act 9 Blood Acqueducts. They shoot barrage of lightning projectile spells, capable of dealing huge amounts of damage. I doubt this is what killed you tho, i assume you got caught in their DD ability. Revenants can revive undead monsters and simultaneously place a buff that blows up their corpses shortly after they're killed. Explosion deals heavy physical damage. It's also very easy to avoid since you can see if a monster is affected by the buff.

Only builds with heavy physical mitigation / spell avoidance can survive multiple explosions from them.

"

DankawSL wrote:

The only dangerous "spider" i know is Stygian Revenant. You can find them in act 4 Belly of the Beast and act 9 Blood Acqueducts. They shoot barrage of lightning projectile spells, capable of dealing huge amounts of damage. I doubt this is what killed you tho, i assume you got caught in their DD ability. Revenants can revive undead monsters and simultaneously place a buff that blows up their corpses shortly after they're killed. Explosion deals heavy physical damage. It's also very easy to avoid since you can see if a monster is affected by the buff.

Only builds with heavy physical mitigation / spell avoidance can survive multiple explosions from them.

There was no visual identifier that I saw. Certainly not on the spider.

The rare spider was also alive when I died, so the spider itself couldn't have been the DD target. How far is their DD range? I don't know exactly what happened prior to that hallway but if let's say I killed a magic pack of X monsters and ran north of them, could a Rev DD on those corpses off screen from the south with zero visual indication?

It's too late for me to say with 100% certainty what the spider looked like. But it's not impossible that it did visually look like what's listed here (minus the lighting bolt): https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Stygian_Revenant

It can spawn in maps as a rare right?

Thanks for the build by the way.

Downed UElder 2 times with this build already at 5.2k hp which went pretty okay.

My only question is what would be the next damage upgrade since I have +3 elder bow and leveled skill gems/support gems.

Prismatic with non-ailment chaos under effect of Malevolence?

I'd like to squeeze in a bit more damage, I was trying out Cherrubim's Maleficence just for the raw 80% chaos increase but it seemed like it didn't increase the dot dps by that much.

"

antelopesalad wrote:

Spoiler

There was no visual identifier that I saw. Certainly not on the spider.

The rare spider was also alive when I died, so the spider itself couldn't have been the DD target. How far is their DD range? I don't know exactly what happened prior to that hallway but if let's say I killed a magic pack of X monsters and ran north of them, could a Rev DD on those corpses off screen from the south with zero visual indication?

It's too late for me to say with 100% certainty what the spider looked like. But it's not impossible that it did visually look like what's listed here (minus the lighting bolt): https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Stygian_Revenant

It can spawn in maps as a rare right?

Thanks for the build by the way.

I gave you locations of the monster so you can quickly check the abilities yourself. Takes few minutes to see everything.

Read closely - the DD is applied when the Revenant revives slain undead monsters, and detonates shortly after you kill them again. As with necromancer, they can revive off-screen, plus the revive spell has AoE.

Like i mentioned - i don't know any other spider-like monsters that's dangerous outside of azurite rares and unique bosses. It's either Revenant or something else.

"

dragonji1 wrote:

Spoiler

Downed UElder 2 times with this build already at 5.2k hp which went pretty okay.

My only question is what would be the next damage upgrade since I have +3 elder bow and leveled skill gems/support gems.

Prismatic with non-ailment chaos under effect of Malevolence?

I'd like to squeeze in a bit more damage, I was trying out Cherrubim's Maleficence just for the raw 80% chaos increase but it seemed like it didn't increase the dot dps by that much.

Elder bow is used for additional mods that can spawn on it. If you have literally the same mods as on typical +3 bow, it won't magically give you more damage. 7-link (damage) or +1 arrow (AoE) is required to make use of it.

Yes, Watcher's Eye is always a solid and easy choice to get higher damage. Helmet enchant in necessary too. More items won't increase your damage drastically, only if you stack multiple of them you can squeeze ~50% more, however it takes huge amount of investment and it's close to pointless to get more. Your gear lacks life anyway.

EDIT: i don't know how it happened, but the site somehow erased my reply. Based on post history it's clearly a bug. Oh well, the response is back now.

I can't thank you enough for your guide. I have been playing for the last month with your guide as my constant companion. Hardcore Legion no deaths.