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

It took a bit of time, went here and there with my own decisions to optimize the build for more casual playstyle and here I am with over 1M DoT dps (same number will be shown in PoB) and missing only watcher's eye with DoT increase while affected by malevolance (not buying since they went up from 40 to 70 ex for no reason). Since the creator of the build is not playing anymore, I am happy to answer any question on how to work out the build and grind through with cheaper gear. You can also check what I am wearing in my profile > IMPOSTERarrow character.

Things that I chosen to go my way:
1. Bow with most base attack speed (it may not affect your damage, but the faster you spread your clouds on the ground, the less you have to worry about someone hitting you if you can't move a lot or got stuck. Elemental dmg does not do a lot of impact on the DoT dps so why worry).
2. Helmet enchant makes only 0.6 second of a difference, but has huge impact on dps. May be a bit tricky to get, but if you are not looking for an OP base, it is a piece of cake, so I went with CA damage, rather than duration.
3. Rather than buying an overpriced quiver with additional pierce, I went to craft the pierce stat on the helmet and save a lot of exalts. This allowed to respec 2 passive points and stuck in another jewel for more chaos DoT dps.
4. HH is now cheap AF, put it on and roll like a boss. Took around 60 ancient orbs to roll 5 HHs, some might say lucky, I could only say that this is imho the cheapest and fastest way to get it, rather than grinding for those 60-70ex, as it will buy itself off anyway. The faster you get it, the faster it will get you back the wealth.
5. Damage on full life has no upside in terms of damage, at least not that I would have noticed, thus I am keeping conc effect, since we are using ruby flask anyway, the covered area is sufficient.
6. Get one jewel with "corrupted blood cannot be inflicted on you" to save some precious time and xp, this will help not to die A LOT.

Other than that, the build is awesome, A8 Sirus, 100% delirious maps and bunch of other end game content goes well, trying to see the what is the limit of the delve now.

I was thinking about rolling this build for the upcoming events. You guys think it's a good idea?

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MrPluszu wrote:

I was thinking about rolling this build for the upcoming events. You guys think it's a good idea?

Yeah, it's a build that can function well in SSF environment (forced in endless delve event) or unstable economy of short leagues.

Notes on endless delve:
- you can't use bench crafts, so for example you can't get veiled mods on bow, or the extra pierce craft

- you can't turn in div cards so you can't get porcupine / imperial legacy 6-link

- 6-link might be VERY hard to get because no div cards, no aqueducts for tabula farming, no vendor to turn jewellers into fusings

- there are some nodes for essences but getting correct one could be very hard

- fossil crafting could be your best bet to craft a good bow, luckily this spec can rely on this method (jagged + metallic + corroded), if you have a 2-slot only corroded + metallic has decent ratio of success too, not sure about faceted fossils which depth they start appearing on because I was never much into delve, but if you find them, they'll be useful

- you can't use einhar to craft flasks, luckily raider has in-built ailment immunity! rejoice

- delve has very little bossing involved so optimize your character for speed clear rather than crazy dps (this build is good for this, raider is pretty fast already)

- you can't obtain cluster jewels, blight oils or catalysts

- the only source of anointments could be talisman nodes, but don't count on anything useful

- you can't get boss specific uniques like thread of hope or watcher's eye or dying sun or cinderswallow, luckily this build has no "mandatory" uniques

- you can't use aspect of the crab most likely so you should probably use flesh&stone or maybe skitterbots in your aura setup

- you don't have to worry about map-specific mods like phys reflect or no mana regen, I don't think they exist in delve?

- there was a post from bex about no bandit rewards - you might end up with 2 passives fewer, also I don't know if we're getting the free respec points - so don't plan mandatory respecs, for example you might want to start with life nodes and suffer through it, not sure if there's easy way to farm regrets either

- no conqueror bases, so no hunter amulets and such

- no mapping or zana mods, so alchs and chaos should be more abundant to spam instead of having to save them for maps

- raider usually isn't a very popular ascendancy, however the demigods are rewarded in delve event by depth not by level (at least bex said so), I don't know which is the "best" raider build to go for deepest push, I have zero experience with deep delving to say anything, so you might need to invent some build tweaks to push the deepest you can

If anyone has any other ideas what's different / important in this event, please share. I'm excited to try them out, I peaced out of heist mostly because of how bugged it was for the whole first month.

I'm kinda considering between caustic arrow and vortex occultist builds for the endless delve, but I don't expect to get very deep because honestly, I have no experience with SSF (I'm a trade pleb for life).

The event seems quite restrictive, for example if you wanna play specters it's very limited (only mobs from delve can be accessed), crafting, div cards, vendors are not accessible, boss drops and conqueror items aren't either, other uniques you'll be at the rng's mercy (for example if you wanted any of the call of steel threshold jewels). I fully expect people playing the "old but gold" builds like ED/contagion and blade vortex (no easy bino / cold iron point or anything like that though).

Very nice Guide. I really love it. Did anyone see a pastebin link for the skill tree? Would be nice if there is in the guide a pastebin link :)

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Protaner wrote:

Very nice Guide. I really love it. Did anyone see a pastebin link for the skill tree? Would be nice if there is in the guide a pastebin link :)

There's one in post #2, just under videos, in POB section. You need to have fork installed, normal POB is broken for 2 leagues btw.

Corrupted these in the flashback league. Very nice not having to use curse setup at all, and it works when clearing packs. I was surprised because it counts every mob in a pack as “hit” when I fire 1 arrow. Might be fun to chase when people are topping out this build.

Very nice guide, thanks for sharing!

Never thought I would level up a build past lv50 in a short-term flashback event. Really like this build!

For all of you SSF afficionados, it seems streamers finally managed to sponsor the "most needed addition to SSF":

(I really wonder who paid it.)

Now this seems to be a great defensive base if you play with hardened scars:


I wanna see ascendancy updates, they revealed deadeye / ele / inquis / slayer / occultist but none of the other ranger ones so far.

New league looks cool, if 36 challenge reward looks good I'm defo going back to some variant of this build as it's the cheapest and most reliable build for me.

Big bonus for no longer having to cable up your garden with the "new" harvest. And yes, they were pretty open about it being nerfed so people don't tailor up perfect items.

yeah that helmet looks pretty good. great for it to be an ar/ev base too. i wonder what the implicit goes up to, 25? 30? you could get some pretty good fortify effect now, including through conqueror exalts etc.

im also eyeballing this build again. i just miss ranger. really looking forward to seeing how they nerf trickster and hopefully buff (and not completely change) ranger. since ranger isn't one of the reworked ascendancies i can't help but think its only numerical buffs or maybe an additional 2 points with who knows what effects.

at the moment though, a toxic rain DEADEYE is looking pretty damn juicy. with the tailwind and gale effect as well as up to 3 mirage archers and 2 free projectiles, holy shit.
i wonder what "nearby" means for the mirage archer effect in order to keep creating them.

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xMustard wrote:

at the moment though, a toxic rain DEADEYE is looking pretty damn juicy. with the tailwind and gale effect as well as up to 3 mirage archers and 2 free projectiles, holy shit.

Sucks that they removed +50% aoe from Endless Munitions though.

On the other hand they added 2 potential defensive nodes to Deadeye so it could be more pleasant to play than being a 1-shot wonder.