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

Hey!
Im playing this build in blight league right now but doing blights is a problem with a lack of clear speed, I got the +3bow and the extra arrow from quiver already i also killed uber Atziri (never done that before) so the build if for sure awesome if you ask me but the clear speed when doing blights and blight maps is a huge problem for me. Im thinking about going pathfinder and buying a dying sun flask but i dont know if that will be enough. Is mirage archer support be of any help here? Or am i screwed when it comes to the new blight things?

Sorry for the bad english, Have a nice day! :))

Sharing my two cents based on some experimentation I've done.

There are two somewhat below the radar changes in 3.8 that have really made a huge difference to the way I play this build:
- Clarity scaling is massively improved
- There is a new "70% increased mana regeneration rate if you've used a spell recently" lab enchant for boots.

This combo enables you to completely solve mana spam problems. As a result, I added Toxic Rain back into the build since I could afford to spam it. Since Toxic Rain scales with attack speed, I dropped Avatar of the Veil for Avatar of the Slaughter and picked up frenzy nodes/Darkray. Between Wither Totems, Flame Dash, and self-cast Despair, I always have the enchant active.

I linked Caustic Arrow with GMP and run around like a demon for map clear, and spamming TR as well as CA during the Blight encounters to have enough DPS to clear. Once I get a Dying Sun and +1 arrow quiver I'll drop GMP.

I'm up to T9-T10 maps and it still feels incredibly smooth. My TR is only in a 4-link now though, so I'm not sure if mana sustain will still be fine on a 6-link, but my Clarity is only level 13, and I can always add the minus mana cost bench craft to my rings if needed.

I'm certainly losing defense this way, but the DPS boost is substantial.

I've been making use of rings that curse enemies with lvl 5 despair on it. It also lets me use a ballista with gmp to curse a whole room. The splat from CA also counts as a hit for the curse. I'm lvl 77 with no deaths so far and really enjoying this build. 131k dot on a 5L currently. The bow I got is INSANE!

"

MeAndMyDrums wrote:

Spoiler

Hey!
Im playing this build in blight league right now but doing blights is a problem with a lack of clear speed, I got the +3bow and the extra arrow from quiver already i also killed uber Atziri (never done that before) so the build if for sure awesome if you ask me but the clear speed when doing blights and blight maps is a huge problem for me. Im thinking about going pathfinder and buying a dying sun flask but i dont know if that will be enough. Is mirage archer support be of any help here? Or am i screwed when it comes to the new blight things?

Sorry for the bad english, Have a nice day! :))

I didn't do many blighted maps yet, but i did figure out few things. You need damaging towers to reduce amount of monsters. However few minutes into the map you will have problems actually going through hundreds of monsters to create new towers. Bosses won't kill themselves either.

The first thing you want to do is build towers far away when you still can. Arc towers are incredibly good at killing mobs so i definitely recommend them, just put few of them early on and you can stop worrying about them. Rest of the towers is standard.

"

rlauren2 wrote:

Spoiler

Sharing my two cents based on some experimentation I've done.

There are two somewhat below the radar changes in 3.8 that have really made a huge difference to the way I play this build:
- Clarity scaling is massively improved
- There is a new "70% increased mana regeneration rate if you've used a spell recently" lab enchant for boots.

This combo enables you to completely solve mana spam problems. As a result, I added Toxic Rain back into the build since I could afford to spam it. Since Toxic Rain scales with attack speed, I dropped Avatar of the Veil for Avatar of the Slaughter and picked up frenzy nodes/Darkray. Between Wither Totems, Flame Dash, and self-cast Despair, I always have the enchant active.

I linked Caustic Arrow with GMP and run around like a demon for map clear, and spamming TR as well as CA during the Blight encounters to have enough DPS to clear. Once I get a Dying Sun and +1 arrow quiver I'll drop GMP.

I'm up to T9-T10 maps and it still feels incredibly smooth. My TR is only in a 4-link now though, so I'm not sure if mana sustain will still be fine on a 6-link, but my Clarity is only level 13, and I can always add the minus mana cost bench craft to my rings if needed.

I'm certainly losing defense this way, but the DPS boost is substantial.

I'm honestly tired of responding to people about Toxic Rain. I wrote enough essays in the past why it's not good addition to the build. Classic build exists and does similar thing with lower DPS, but retains one of CA's biggest perks - being able to remain mobile while dealing damage.

"

reetismatic wrote:

Spoiler

I've been making use of rings that curse enemies with lvl 5 despair on it. It also lets me use a ballista with gmp to curse a whole room. The splat from CA also counts as a hit for the curse. I'm lvl 77 with no deaths so far and really enjoying this build. 131k dot on a 5L currently. The bow I got is INSANE!

Auto-cursing can be useful against rare mobs, but otherwise it's not very useful. I don't know if it overwrites the Frenzy-CoH-Despair setup, but if it does then i would say it's overall downgrade. It would require testing.

saw a video that claims skitterbots to be useful for everybuild because of the auto chill and shock.how would you rank it? It seesm an option Beside Grace or malevolence.

After you told me about skitterbots, i've decided to try them out for a bit and... i'm mostly disappointed. Their AI is good at what it does but they aren't so strong. They aren't needed for clear and against bosses Shock is additive to Wither and Despair so the actual DPS gain is really minor. 35% mana reservation is also quite a lot.

Slowing part is probably more important one and it's still very hard to notice it. You also need Enlighten to run it since Clarity also takes a little bit of mana pool.

So why not just use Aspect of the Spider? Does almost the same thing at lower mana reservation. It doesn't have action speed slow but stronger movement speed one.

No matter what, Aspect of the Crab is currently the best option to reserve that last bit of your mana. Cheap mitigation is what evasion builds love.

Thx for the analysis. Didn't feel right in the first place to use the bots.

Can anyone explain to me why no jewel slots are picked on the passive tree in this build, even though the guide is mentioning what jewels to pick?

I'm a real newbie and just trying to follow the guide along.

"

mccready wrote:

Can anyone explain to me why no jewel slots are picked on the passive tree in this build, even though the guide is mentioning what jewels to pick?

I'm a real newbie and just trying to follow the guide along.

It's explained in the guide:

"

If you've reached level 93 using any of the trees, start picking up closest jewel slots. You can also replace some life/damage nodes for 2 point jewels if you have the money for it.

"

Viktranka wrote:

"

mccready wrote:

Can anyone explain to me why no jewel slots are picked on the passive tree in this build, even though the guide is mentioning what jewels to pick?

I'm a real newbie and just trying to follow the guide along.

It's explained in the guide:

"

If you've reached level 93 using any of the trees, start picking up closest jewel slots. You can also replace some life/damage nodes for 2 point jewels if you have the money for it.

Ohh right, thanks for the heads up. Feels kinda weird, one would expect that jewel slots are worth more than most regular nodes.