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

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Sentry001 wrote:

Spoiler

Hi

I was looking at what would be best on my bow.

Can someone tell me if Damage over time would be as good as Non-Ailment Chaos Damage over Time Multiplier ?

Non-ailment chaos DoT multi is superior choice to almost any other craft. If other were nearly as good, i would probably mention it. You can try crafting something else only if you don't have that particular mod.

You should buy some fossils in order to craft your bow into +3 gems one.

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octeris wrote:

Spoiler

Very much looking forward to seeing the Raider tweaks. Based on GGG's typical buff-then-nerf style of refreshing the meta, I would not be surprised to see nerfs to ED/Contagion and Cyclone coming out of Legion.

Because of that I think Caustic Arrow Raider could be one of the better league-starters for Blight. Given what the league mechanic is and what the gameplay looks like so far, it seems like we can just stand near the Ichor Pump and paint the ground with DoT. Sounds good to me. :)

Cyclone is undoubtly getting nerfed to some degree, the question is how severe are the nerfs. ED might avoid any changes or get minor tweaks at best. The league mechanic doesn't exactly favour ED due to spawn mechanics, so constant casting is going to be required.

CA is never a bad choice. Making a one big degen pool should make it very easy to defend. Investing into duration is going to be more important than ever before.

Raider in general might be extremely strong. Monsters are going to follow a certain path until they find an obstacle (player/minion/totem). The monsters are most likely all melee. So with Flesh and Stone combined with 25% more evasion it creates extremely easy and reliable way to get 95% evade chance, safely tanking the wave if necessary.

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RirinaNanase wrote:

i recently started playing PoE and i got interested in your build but im playing Scion.

Since im too new idk what to pick, so do you have a build for Scion to go for Caustic Arrow?

I've provided 5 ascendancies total and Ascendant (Scion) isn't one of them for a reason. She's inferior ever since 3.2 patch. Weak during levelling and her full potential can't compare to others.

You can try adapting your tree to classic one like Viktranka mentioned. It won't be very well balanced (either defence or offense early, not both) but might give you an idea how the build plays if you wanna try it in Blight league.

Having in mind that your highest level character is probably 37 and it's not Scion, you might want to reconsider trying again with Ranger.

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DankawSL wrote:

CA is never a bad choice. Making a one big degen pool should make it very easy to defend. Investing into duration is going to be more important than ever before.

Raider in general might be extremely strong. Monsters are going to follow a certain path until they find an obstacle (player/minion/totem). The monsters are most likely all melee. So with Flesh and Stone combined with 25% more evasion it creates extremely easy and reliable way to get 95% evade chance, safely tanking the wave if necessary.

Interesting! possible changes to the tree?

It doesn't matter at all since build doesn't use poison. You can focus only on one or another due to the scaling (lvls vs weapon base dmg), and CA is not the greatest skill for poison like TS, Scourge Arrow or Toxic Rain.

Withering Step might be interesting tho, it's instant movement skill with some bonuses. Considering we use Blink Arrow rarely, it seems like a decent replacement. Gotta see it in action to decide if it's worth or not.

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DankawSL wrote:

It doesn't matter at all since build doesn't use poison. You can focus only on one or another due to the scaling (lvls vs weapon base dmg), and CA is not the greatest skill for poison like TS, Scourge Arrow or Toxic Rain.

Withering Step might be interesting tho, it's instant movement skill with some bonuses. Considering we use Blink Arrow rarely, it seems like a decent replacement. Gotta see it in action to decide if it's worth or not.

Yea I also liked the Withering Step, it grants Phasing and Elusive effect (40% increased movement speed as well as 20% attack and spell dodge ~ fits with Raider XD). I wonder about its interacttion with Wither Totem.

I think they will most likely reword some notables, instead of exclusively Non-Ailment Chaos DoT Multiplier, maybe another line of Poison DoT Multiplier if I guessed it right.

Hi,

I've managed to clear up to t12 with my build, but am struggling at higher levels.

My build is : https://pastebin.com/dkrThECb

I do sometimes use the Kintsugi Exquisite armour, but I don't find there is much difference in using it.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

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Sentry001 wrote:

Hi,

I've managed to clear up to t12 with my build, but am struggling at higher levels.

My build is : https://pastebin.com/dkrThECb

I do sometimes use the Kintsugi Exquisite armour, but I don't find there is much difference in using it.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Do the uber lab so you can get other affixes on flasks, for example you could use dying sun when you don't need so many anti-ailment flasks.

Why do you have 3 life flasks and damage on full life support? If you're on full life majority of the time, you could swap 1-2 of these for utility, if you really are using 3 life flasks regularly, then the damage on full life doesn't apply most of the time? For mapping 1 should be enough, with maybe another for bossing when it's harder to get flask charges back.

You shouldn't really need a mana flask either except for no-regen maps. You have lots of options from basalt for survivability to sulfur for a bit more damage, quicksilver for more movement speed, etc.

You should try to get the "of reflexes" affix on the jade flask because having it on life flask means the moment it heals you to full it disappears and the extra evasion bonus is gone too.

If you use curse on hit, and not as a blasphemy, not sure if impressence is the best option, and if I remember it's also quite expensive for what it provides for this build.

Your gloves, I don't understand. You could get some multimodded ones with chaos damage over time multiplier and they would be of much more use.

Your quiver seems to be made for a different build? Multimodded for crit multi and elemental damage with attacks?

You would have higher total life if you used non essential slots to maximize life / resistances instead of other variables, especially when you play on pc not console and you can tweak gear searching & filtering to prio specific stats.

Buying a lvl 21 caustic arrow would be the most straightforward damage upgrade. Also you have lvl 4 enlighten which is not mandatory for this build, while lvl 4 empower would be slightly cheaper and a damage increase (by skipping swift affliction or w/e gems you find the worst value).

About your CWDT setup, immortal call and steelskin share cooldown, so I would probably pick whichever you find more useful and skip the other one. Even better would be to manually use steelskin when you expect damage (assuming you don't play in high latency environment or anything that would make it impossible to time it), because CWDT lvl 20 requires you to take 3,2k damage before it procs and with 4,8k life total this is a really high threshold.

I would probably use multiple totems support on wither instead of increased duration, since you recast totems as they die (and you have enough downtime while caustic arrow is ticking) so they keep reapplying the stacks. Multiple totems allows to have 3 up at the same time which imo is a quality of life upgrade, but it's a minor thing overall.

Generally the league is about to end but if you plan to play the build next season try to plan expenses in a way you don't overspend on items that aren't worth the buck (enlighten lvl 4, impressence), that way you can save for bigger upgrades elsewhere. Unless someone donated you the gear you wear, then yeah I can see being stuck with sub optimal items (like the quiver or gloves).

P.S. If you consider remaking the character for next league and you enjoy queen of the forest, I would strongly consider trickster, it benefits from high evasion chest, it provides extra defenses like ghost shrouds / free energy shield so you don't have to plan to cap evasion, and it has nodes that significantly increase damage of dot skills.

P.S.2. Forgot to ask, what's your biggest struggle? I would imagine with your current setup it would be survivability, but I could be wrong.

Thankyou for your reply, your suggestions really help a lot.

You were right about my biggest struggle - survivability !!

I shall try to make those changes you suggested.

Thankyou again.

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DankawSL wrote:

...

Possible Raider ascendancy changes for 3.8 Blight League.
SOURCE: https://imgur.com/a/dPfphUu

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Tetrad wrote:

Yea I also liked the Withering Step, it grants Phasing and Elusive effect (40% increased movement speed as well as 20% attack and spell dodge ~ fits with Raider XD). I wonder about its interacttion with Wither Totem.

I think they will most likely reword some notables, instead of exclusively Non-Ailment Chaos DoT Multiplier, maybe another line of Poison DoT Multiplier if I guessed it right.

It's quite versatile in general, to the point where it doesn't make too much sense. It's better offensively rather than defensively due to the nature of removing the buff on casting a skill/spell. If you want to use it to get away - you don't really need the dodge portion since you've already done that manually. MS is the most useful portion of the buff. In case you use Elusive for in-combat buff, you can use Withering step to reset the buff instead of waiting it to expire.

Primary reason to use Withering Step on this build is instant blink and little extra Wither stacks against trash mobs. It won't replace Wither Totem for sure.

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Sentry001 wrote:

Spoiler

Hi,

I've managed to clear up to t12 with my build, but am struggling at higher levels.

My build is : https://pastebin.com/dkrThECb

I do sometimes use the Kintsugi Exquisite armour, but I don't find there is much difference in using it.

Any help would be very much appreciated.
[...]
You were right about my biggest struggle - survivability !!

This happened due to you not reading progression section (guess based on passive tree). Your evade chance is much lower than it should be. Things you should've done by now:

* Let's start with the fact you shouldn't do red maps in the first place, it's inefficient XP-wise.
* For the love of god, FLASKS. Every person who has problems is running awful flask setup. Curse immunity is a must on ANY build. "of Reflexes" utility flask is also a core part of the build. You can find the setup in equipment section.

* You're supposed to use Grace if you have problems capping evade chance.
* Your CWDT setup is pointless. Only Immortal Call is being triggered and it's worse than Steelskin. Increased duration is kinda pointless too.
* You're missing uber lab ascendancy points, it also heavily boost defence.
* Missing 2 big life nodes on passive tree. You simply need to level up.
* Kintsugi is primarly supposed to help against big hits from bosses. With enough avoidance it works during map clear too. Currently QotF is better for you during clear.

* Your gear is fine for the most part, however Blasphemer's Grasp gloves are just pointless to use.
* Rings could use an upgrade (at least one of them) and you're wasting Impresence's potential. It should be elder ring with 5% chance to Evade Attacks.
* Starkonja's is decent but not something you want to include permanently in the build.
* Quiver is fine... for now. Should be replaced for something with higher health eventually.

Half of the stuff i've mentioned could be gathered from following the instructions. I think it's everything there is.

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Tetrad wrote:

Spoiler

Possible Raider ascendancy changes for 3.8 Blight League.
SOURCE: https://imgur.com/a/dPfphUu

I did see the leaks already but didn't post them since the numbers might change at any time. As far as i know the leak is trustworthy (someone posted whole passive tree from alpha realm).

As i expected, frenzy route was barely touched and phasing path got massive buffs, primarly the first passive node. I did not expect GGG to buff onslaught path, since i believe it already trivializes the gameplay. Now being evade capped is just stupidly easy. If it goes through i might even remove Grace from gem setups.

However i do like GGG's approach of preserving and enforcing Raider's defensive potential. We didn't get Occultist treatment, that's the best news there is.

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DankawSL wrote:

Spoiler

It's quite versatile in general, to the point where it doesn't make too much sense. It's better offensively rather than defensively due to the nature of removing the buff on casting a skill/spell. If you want to use it to get away - you don't really need the dodge portion since you've already done that manually. MS is the most useful portion of the buff. In case you use Elusive for in-combat buff, you can use Withering step to reset the buff instead of waiting it to expire.

Primary reason to use Withering Step on this build is instant blink and little extra Wither stacks against trash mobs. It won't replace Wither Totem for sure.

Spoiler

I did see the leaks already but didn't post them since the numbers might change at any time. As far as i know the leak is trustworthy (someone posted whole passive tree from alpha realm).

As i expected, frenzy route was barely touched and phasing path got massive buffs, primarly the first passive node. I did not expect GGG to buff onslaught path, since i believe it already trivializes the gameplay. Now being evade capped is just stupidly easy. If it goes through i might even remove Grace from gem setups.

However i do like GGG's approach of preserving and enforcing Raider's defensive potential. We didn't get Occultist treatment, that's the best news there is.

Thank you for your thoughts and ideas @Dankaw. Looking forward to league start CA Raider again, I might try out SSF this time since it is easy to farm 6L Imperial bows.