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

what eq should i wear on low lvl? what flasks etc?

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DevixQ wrote:

what eq should i wear on low lvl? what flasks etc?

you should load the POB profile given in the guide (path of building section). Under "items" there is a "budget gear" suggestion to begin with.

https://pastebin.com/Lgx403F2

For lower levels, use classic leveling stuff if you can afford it (quill rain, wanderlust, tabula, goldrim, lochtonial, karui ward). I personaly leveled using Caustic arrow and also toxic rain, as suggested in the guide. Very smooth.

Last few days weren't too good for me. I'll spare details but that's why i didn't really answer lately.

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Red_Devil_666 wrote:

Spoiler

Hi, I really like the build, still working on it, but made a lot of progression lately. Pretty high level already without any sweat, but also due to public parties.

Still some random questions, hopefully someone to answer ;)

1. What's the actual playstyle? Just rotate frenzy/CA shooting so we get to (and keep) max frenzy stacks? How do you optimize the single target dps?
2. Are we doing elemental damage and should we stack some damage in there (regarding ascendency getting 40%) or only chaos damage is useful?
3. Is physical damage doing anything for our damage or is it 'just' DoT, Chaos damage and skill level?
4. Dread banner is just active and never placed?
5. Projectile damage/speed useful?
6. We need a lot of str/int, should we get that from passive tree or items?
7. Is pierce for damage or just so the aoe goes more in the middle of a pack?
8. Which base is the best bow, high phys dam + speed?

Thanks in advance!

PS. Yes i need a lot of upgrades, but out of cash for now :D

Pretty much everything is answered inside the guide somewhere. It's a very basic info and some of them you should pick up just by playing. I bet you found answers to them already. Normally i wouldn't answer this but don't have much to right right now:

1. Just look at videos. Keep CA on enemies at all times, curse with frenzy and upkeep Wither Totem on tankier enemies when you have free time.
2. You can find answer to this everywhere. No, elemental damage doesn't matter. Whole build is chaos DoT oriented. Ascendancy is only picked for defence/QoL purposes. It adds 0 damage.
3. Same as above.
4. Vidoes. Never placed.
5. CA tooltip. Projectile damage scales CA's DoT damage. Projectile speed is mostly QoL.
6. Gear section and passive tree itself. Almost everything comes from passive tree, but you'll need a little bit more from gear to meet lvl 20 gem requirements.
7. Check it yourself through gameplay. Remove all pierce sources, you'll quickly find out how good it actually is. It's effective AoE increase and QoL at the same time.
8. Bow crafting section. The higher attack speed the better, nothing else matters.

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AaxFamily wrote:

Spoiler

Now at level 85 with correct gear. Still a lot of fun.

Testing things, I just wonder what is the advantage of barrage over GMP on frenzy ? GMP spreads more and touches/curses more enemy imho. I suppose that barrage has another advantage, but I do not see it. I thought perhaps it was stacking 3 frenzy charges in one shot, but it does not seem to be the case.

I also noticed that I can replace the banner with a double aura grace/malevolence with enlighten, which gives more evade chance at the end on POB. 70 mana left, but enough mana regen to sustain mapping. And thus it seems that I obtain 95% evade chance without any flask under POB (and even without "wind dancer"). Does it seem possible to you or do I make a mistake somewhere ??? because then, i could forget the jade flask and switch on a more physical mitigation flask (granite + %armor for ex). Because when I take a hit (it's not often), it hurts... ;-)

By the way, in POB, in the config part, we can enter the number of wither stacks the enemy receives (+6% chaos damage per stack !!!). It seems hat you did not put anything in your POB setup (even if you mention it in the guide). It makes a huge difference. With 2 totems, an average cast speed of 4 per second, and a duration of 2 seconds, I supposed that the max 15 stacks can be obtained : does it seems coherent with your experience on long fights ?

Barrage allows to quickly proc onslaught on bosses and isn't as affected by ~80-90% accuracy like GMP is. Quicker animation which you can cancel is another advantage.

FAQ: How do i know that i'm evade chance capped?
A: Check your character sheet (C) and find estimated chance to evade attacks. With flasks activated you need ~73% to be capped. That's assuming you have onslaught buff active which enables Raider's 30% more chance to evade. That buff is not included in those calculations.

Dread Banner is required if you want to use Wind Dancer keystone, and to be fair you should. I'll add evade chance threshold with banner next time, it's ~65%. The bonus banner gives is not included in character sheet estimate values, since it affects enemies. I did not include 15% less monster accuracy while phasing debuff as it should be treated as an extra buffer against certain monster/map mods.

By using Grace you can't use other more impactful mana reservation skills and you need higher investment to make it work. It's not worth it. Basalt flask is great but shorter duration and higher cost make it harder to piano your flasks (unlike Jade flask). Aspect of the Crab does the same thing if not better, because it's active all the time and quickly recovers as well.

I'm aware of Wither setting in PoB since 2 weeks or something. It was configured correctly in original PoB and fork too iirc, but at some point fork changed the way you set up Wither stacks and it no longer works there. Wither lasts over 4 seconds with the suggested 4-link setup, there's no problem keeping it up.

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AaxFamily wrote:

Spoiler

now level 90, still wondering if hitting 95% evade chance in POB without flask nor wind-dancer is sufficient, because under POE, if I look at my defensive stats, it shows only 69% chance to evade attacks, and I can rise this number to 82% if I drink evasion flasks... So I wonder if POB is correct... First time I level an evasive character, so I'm a little confused...

BTW, I failed on Sirus 5, seems that he resist chaos a lot, no ? It feels like it was during a very long time between phases. For him, I will stick on my ancestral warchief chieftain who is more solid ;-)

First paragraph answered earlier.

Build doesn't deal high amounts of damage, and combined with Sirus' chaos resist, invulnerability phases and teleporting around arena so he loses Wither stacks and escapes DoT ground... of course it's gonna take a long time. But build is made so it can survive any encounter, and for Sirus specifically you need to be good at fight or invest a lot into spell dodge.

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DevixQ wrote:

what eq should i wear on low lvl? what flasks etc?

Everything is explained in gear / levelling section. Life and resistances.

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AaxFamily wrote:

Spoiler

you should load the POB profile given in the guide (path of building section). Under "items" there is a "budget gear" suggestion to begin with.

https://pastebin.com/Lgx403F2

For lower levels, use classic leveling stuff if you can afford it (quill rain, wanderlust, tabula, goldrim, lochtonial, karui ward). I personaly leveled using Caustic arrow and also toxic rain, as suggested in the guide. Very smooth.

He's level 60+, he doesn't need levelling gear. I wouldn't reply to this if it wasn't for Quill Rain suggestion. No, absolutely terrible and life halves your damage with CA compared to Silverbranch (if you socket CA inside it). It's only good for TR. Plus i do list good twink gear already.

Thx for your answer. Hope everything is fine for you.

Thx again for this fun build. I think that (except sirus) I died twice while mapping between level 70 and 92 ! :-) This build is incredibly solid, with very fast clearing. And the DPS too, except on some few particular bosses, as usual.

In char sheet, I have 69% chance to evade at rest, 72% in combat and 73% with my actual flasks (no jade but +% evasion one), so I guess it's fine.

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Dread Banner is required if you want to use Wind Dancer keystone, and to be fair you should. I'll add evade chance threshold with banner next time, it's ~65%. The bonus banner gives is not included in character sheet estimate values, since it affects enemies. I did not include 15% less monster accuracy while phasing debuff as it should be treated as an extra buffer against certain monster/map mods.

Could you explain why dread banner is required for winddancer. Not clear for me (my english is not always accurate when I read tooltips). I still not have wind-dancer nor banner, because I thought I was already evade capped. Maybe it's a mistake.

Do you mean that without winddancer, the evade cap is different ? But in general, would you say that POB evade chance calculation is ok ? Because, as I said, in POB I have 95% evade chance against level 84 monsters, without any flask nor winddancer... So I'm still a bit confused.

I saw that the 15% accu is treated by POB.

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No, absolutely terrible and life halves your damage with CA compared to Silverbranch (if you socket CA inside it). It's only good for TR. Plus i do list good twink gear already.

Oh yes, my mistake of my old brain : I wanted to say silverbranch/bough that I used myself for leveling. Sorry.

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AaxFamily wrote:

Could you explain why dread banner is required for winddancer.

How wind dancer works:
It lowers your evasion but gives better 1-shot protection because 1st hit that lands is reduced by 20% on you. Then when you get hit, it increases your evasion for 4 seconds. Then it reverts to the first stage.

So to cover the lower evasion "when you weren't hit" stage you use the banner which doesn't increase your evasion but reduces the mob chance to hit. So the outcome should be you'll be hit less often and have the 1-shot protection ready more often.

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Viktranka wrote:

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Oh yes, I understand now the synergy between both. I made some tests under POB and it's clear that if you want Wind dancer, you have to take the banner to keep global 95% evade chance under POB. It make sense.

So the fact is that, despite my constant 95% evade chance, I do not get profit of this 20% less damage. I must admit that it does not bother me for the moment for T16 mapping, but I'll check if I can modify this. Thanks for your help.

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AaxFamily wrote:

So the fact is that, despite my constant 95% evade chance, I do not get profit of this 20% less damage.

If you config pob there's an option "were you hit recently" - if you put this ON you should have higher evasion, if you put this OFF you will have lower evasion and 20% damage reduction.

Anyway in practice the 20% less damage taken should work even on things you normally cannot evade, i.e. spells.

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Viktranka wrote:

If you config pob there's an option "were you hit recently" - if you put this ON you should have higher evasion, if you put this OFF you will have lower evasion and 20% damage reduction.

Anyway in practice the 20% less damage taken should work even on things you normally cannot evade, i.e. spells.

Yes that's the option I was playing with, in POB. Enabling winddancer, my evade drop from 95 to 82% if not hit, then enabling banner, it goes back to 95%. But with the 20% all-reduction in bonus. :-)

Just rejoined the game after a few years this league, and using this build has been really helpful, so thanks for that! Equipment has been reasonably affordable so far, but my penny-pinching is not gonna like crafting my own +3 bow though.

One question, is there a reason to use Barrage instead of Greater Multiple Projectiles for the Cursed Frenzy setup? I've been using the latter for easier targeting, and I'm unsure if I'm missing out by not using barrage. Unless barrage allows for multiple charges of frenzy?

Sorta funny cause this was just answered higher on this page. "Barrage allows to quickly proc onslaught on bosses and isn't as affected by ~80-90% accuracy like GMP is. Quicker animation which you can cancel is another advantage." - DankawSL

Early on I use Greater Multiple Projectiles, it feels more efficient at spreading your curse across a lot o enemies. Once you get your damage decent everything dies instantly except rares and bosses so Barrage is better for all the reasons started above. Id also add that if you have a Awakened Hextouch Support barrage is even better, since you get a quick succession of chances to bypass hexproof.