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

"

KodiakX wrote:

"

DankawSL wrote:

Why Kintsugi suddenly became amazing only because of Wind Dancer? It's not like Kintsugi suddenly offers more protection than before, both stats are multiplicative. If your build had at least those 6k life and good avoidance, then Kintsugi already mitigated majority of oneshots.

I think i already know what the answer is going to be but i still want to hear it.

As a Sabo who relied on evasion/dodge, Kintsugi was always an amazing option and I've always seen in evasion/dodge related builds. I remember back in Blight I used it when Wind Dancer was on a Timeless jewel even. I don't know if Deadly Rivalries got nerfed, but I got 5 in about 200-300 coins.


As for the build it has crazy disgusting map clear in my experience. Even grouping up with 5 other people rolling a Witchbrew plus Dying Sun and you just watch whole screens melt after a few seconds. For virtually 99% of the game content it feels just amazing, speedy and all around great.

My biggest issue has been boss dps. When you get to higher end such as Maven T16 bosses or even Conqs it's just surprisingly slow. The Maven heals outpace the Caustic dot in most cases. Being able to land Wither basically makes or breaks your damage and anything with heavy AOE obliterates the totems so fast I feel way more like a totem build than I do a bow or dot build. Looking at alternative builds I felt a bit better (saw the Pathfinder Toxic Rain Phoenix clear and it's about the same speed as this one) but I still am unsure about this build with such a boss heavy new atlas mechanic. The good news at least is the defenses are on point and you do feel incredibly tanky at evasion and near dodge cap and huge damage mitigation on hits.

5 mil dps is a bad? for like 10 exalts? :O

"

fuksdelux wrote:

5 mil dps is a bad? for like 10 exalts? :O

Man I'd have to see it to believe it.

Awakened supports are roughly 5-6ex by themselves for the 3 of them and empower 4 is 5ex by itself. Add in Kintsugi and you're easily at 14-15ex before you've even purchased any of the high ilvl hunter bases for helm, amulet, belt, gloves and quiver.

Also I don't see the 5 million DPS number on any configuration for bosses. Even taking my current gear, adding a super crazy 12ex+ bow (double dot multi, +1 gems, +2 support gems, etc), adding in cluster jewels and awakened skill gems I'd be topping out about 1.3m against shaper/guardian in the config. At most with perfect gear in every slot I might see 2 million dps on shaper/guardian but that's still only around 4m on trash (and that's assuming 4m with 15 wither stacks on trash which isn't going to happen).

With about 10-12ex worth of gear, I'm only at around 760k shaper/guardian dps. I certainly fly through maps and obliterate all the trash super fast and it's wonderful for that, but it's a colossal drop off in performance when you start hitting T16 Maven map bosses let alone Guardians. Even in 5 man HP scaled content it shreds packs. But bosses it's just straight up garbage on. The only time you see the bar move is if you can keep your wither totems out and there are some fights where that is full time job or impossible because of the AOE.

"

fuksdelux wrote:

5 mil dps is a bad? for like 10 exalts? :O

Wait, which build are we talking about because I've reached 2.8mil mapping damage (w/o wither) 2.4mil bossing damage (w/ full wither) after around 30ex invested in harvest and that was with trading for crafts, playing PF over Raider, and late league prices (early everything is more expensive), also that's counting ex as 150-200 chaos, if they're worth 100c or less double that because most crafts I traded for chaos not ex.

Only people I saw reaching 4-5mil on CA was pre-nerf Tricksters with delve +5 bows or synthesized bows and going glass cannon hard on dps (double or triple clusters, all out on offensive auras, asenath's chant for extra spells, bottled faith, etc.)

Current top poe.ninja CA is 4.6mil as Occultist and pretty sure that counts max wither due to ascendancy, and it has synthesized bow with +1 support extra on top of normal stats, double cluster, +2 amulet, aspect of the spider (malevolence and skitters, no defensive aura), -9 chaos res helmet, awakened gems, double dot quiver, low amount of life and only thing he's lacking is watcher's eye (hard to get in week1). I'm pretty sure poe.ninja will also count vaal blight debuff as active even though it's not 100% uptime. He also specced malediction which is 10% extra dps.

As much as I tried to do something similar in the past, I couldn't play with 4k life, no defensives and ofc didn't have that bow, so I had to sacrifice dps for defenses / qol.

"

Viktranka wrote:

Spoiler

I'm not an oracle but usual reasons for something skyrocketing in price is X famous streamer made a build with Y item and 10,000 copy pasta players followed.

Same happened with Vertex helmet, it was a mega cheap good ES helmet I used on my Occultist at some point then 2 Trickster builds started recommending it, got popular, it skyrocketed in price. Same with Devoto in Legion because someone made cyclone build with it, and recently since Trickster got nerfed, Remi's Toxic Rain Pathfinder jumped in popularity and it recommends Devoto so here we are. Same happened with Storm's Secret ring (w/e the name of the Herald of Thunder one), it was cheap until someone was like "look at my autobomber video" and then everyone followed. Or last season the Minotaur's chest when carrion golem Elementalist was a thing and specific guide recommended that chest.

It's kinda like 1,5 years ago I told someone if he wanna play with armor (iron reflexes) and phase acro he can use perfect form, that was before thread of hope existed, that build got decently popular and used that perfect form to this day even though there are maybe other options, and then another guy literally copied that build together with that perfect form without even asking.

Spoiler

The first one is Torstein's poison claw pathfinder and the copier is Angry Roleplayer's pestilent strike.

Most softcore players don't have 6k life though so I would assume Kintsugi alone wouldn't be noticeable but when someone thinks they can get reduced a hit in half that suddenly looks "big" at least on paper.

Btw while talking about chests the new maven drop seems kinda weird, doesn't have many things on it, but the things it has seem quite potent. I dunno what to think of it: https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Doppelg%C3%A4nger_Guise
Probably won't try it because I tend to never play crit builds... Even though I played with weird chest options like Perfect Form, Cherrubim, Sporeguard and the Craiceann one.
Is 25% phys and chaos reduction worth losing a chest slot, assuming price isn't a problem (it probably is, but anyway)?

Streamer/guide creators are definitely the reason why it became popular. It's honestly unreal how much impact on economy and build creation we have. Raider being any popular for years, primarly in HC leagues was my doing. However that's not what i was asking about.

Kintsugi was never used until introduction of Wind Dancer, despite giving the precise same amount of mitigation it always did - with or without keystone.

Assuming your build is good, relying on one is enough for the most part and two doesn't hurt for extra protection. I believe it's better to invest into more reliable sources of mitigation that won't disappear on first hit. After all to make use of that type of damage reduction you need to almost never get hit, so either avoidance or ridiculous clear. Many "one shots" often consist of more than one hit.

Since Kintsugi occupies extremely important body armour slot and Wind Dancer shouldn't be too far on evasion character passive tree, the choice is quite obvious.

Raider is a special case due to ridiculous amount of avoidance you have, making this type of defence significantly more reliable as a result. It's always a good option.

That's how i see the whole situation.

As for that new chest... imo not worth it. You can craft something that also gives you life. Physical mitigation is much easier to get than elemental (mostly spells are the problem) if you only wish to invest into it. Chaos damage reduction is not necessary, same for regen (but definitely tempting). It also has low evasion. With recent changes to Onslaught path it's harder to cap it without relying on Avatar of Veil's aura.

"

KodiakX wrote:

Spoiler

As a Sabo who relied on evasion/dodge, Kintsugi was always an amazing option and I've always seen in evasion/dodge related builds. I remember back in Blight I used it when Wind Dancer was on a Timeless jewel even. I don't know if Deadly Rivalries got nerfed, but I got 5 in about 200-300 coins.


As for the build it has crazy disgusting map clear in my experience. Even grouping up with 5 other people rolling a Witchbrew plus Dying Sun and you just watch whole screens melt after a few seconds. For virtually 99% of the game content it feels just amazing, speedy and all around great.

My biggest issue has been boss dps. When you get to higher end such as Maven T16 bosses or even Conqs it's just surprisingly slow. The Maven heals outpace the Caustic dot in most cases. Being able to land Wither basically makes or breaks your damage and anything with heavy AOE obliterates the totems so fast I feel way more like a totem build than I do a bow or dot build. Looking at alternative builds I felt a bit better (saw the Pathfinder Toxic Rain Phoenix clear and it's about the same speed as this one) but I still am unsure about this build with such a boss heavy new atlas mechanic. The good news at least is the defenses are on point and you do feel incredibly tanky at evasion and near dodge cap and huge damage mitigation on hits.

So more or less build does it's job. Low boss damage is not because of the build, but from skill itself. You can go other damage ascendancies, but they don't really offer that much more besides Occultist. It's almost all about gear, and with Harvest craftin being core it's now significantly easier to get high damage values.

I never had problems with Wither Totem. If you place right, it'll do the job reliably without being destroyed. Replacing it is quick once you have quality on gems.

If you truly want more damage, you can respec into TR but obviously this build is not optimized for it. Weapon swap exists. It's worth to keep in mind that part of CA's survivability comes from safer playstyle. It's very easy to get greedy and die when using TR.

I have yet to see build's performance in high tier Maven encounters myself. Healing is definitely something that i would rather not encounter. So far i haven't noticed which doesn't mean much since i barely tickled red maps before i died to pathfinding being a little too good.

"

fuksdelux wrote:

5 mil dps is a bad? for like 10 exalts? :O

In PoB section i mention to use Calcs tab and check numbers there. Big number on the left is a scenario that's never going to happen. You use "In Combat" calculation method against normal mobs and "Effective DPS" against bosses. That's why i'm quite annoyed when people speak about CA's damage in millions without giving any context.

At least nowadays fork PoB is smarter and no longer uses mob type calculation for "In Combat" setting which should fix millions of dps problem. Now i can use Shaper config without problems.

"

KodiakX wrote:

Spoiler

"

fuksdelux wrote:

5 mil dps is a bad? for like 10 exalts? :O

Man I'd have to see it to believe it.

Awakened supports are roughly 5-6ex by themselves for the 3 of them and empower 4 is 5ex by itself. Add in Kintsugi and you're easily at 14-15ex before you've even purchased any of the high ilvl hunter bases for helm, amulet, belt, gloves and quiver.

Also I don't see the 5 million DPS number on any configuration for bosses. Even taking my current gear, adding a super crazy 12ex+ bow (double dot multi, +1 gems, +2 support gems, etc), adding in cluster jewels and awakened skill gems I'd be topping out about 1.3m against shaper/guardian in the config. At most with perfect gear in every slot I might see 2 million dps on shaper/guardian but that's still only around 4m on trash (and that's assuming 4m with 15 wither stacks on trash which isn't going to happen).

With about 10-12ex worth of gear, I'm only at around 760k shaper/guardian dps. I certainly fly through maps and obliterate all the trash super fast and it's wonderful for that, but it's a colossal drop off in performance when you start hitting T16 Maven map bosses let alone Guardians. Even in 5 man HP scaled content it shreds packs. But bosses it's just straight up garbage on. The only time you see the bar move is if you can keep your wither totems out and there are some fights where that is full time job or impossible because of the AOE.

Answer is above. It's a common mistake people do.

"

Viktranka wrote:

Spoiler

"

fuksdelux wrote:

5 mil dps is a bad? for like 10 exalts? :O

Wait, which build are we talking about because I've reached 2.8mil mapping damage (w/o wither) 2.4mil bossing damage (w/ full wither) after around 30ex invested in harvest and that was with trading for crafts, playing PF over Raider, and late league prices (early everything is more expensive), also that's counting ex as 150-200 chaos, if they're worth 100c or less double that because most crafts I traded for chaos not ex.

Only people I saw reaching 4-5mil on CA was pre-nerf Tricksters with delve +5 bows or synthesized bows and going glass cannon hard on dps (double or triple clusters, all out on offensive auras, asenath's chant for extra spells, bottled faith, etc.)

Current top poe.ninja CA is 4.6mil as Occultist and pretty sure that counts max wither due to ascendancy, and it has synthesized bow with +1 support extra on top of normal stats, double cluster, +2 amulet, aspect of the spider (malevolence and skitters, no defensive aura), -9 chaos res helmet, awakened gems, double dot quiver, low amount of life and only thing he's lacking is watcher's eye (hard to get in week1). I'm pretty sure poe.ninja will also count vaal blight debuff as active even though it's not 100% uptime. He also specced malediction which is 10% extra dps.

As much as I tried to do something similar in the past, I couldn't play with 4k life, no defensives and ofc didn't have that bow, so I had to sacrifice dps for defenses / qol.

Check my reply to fuksdelux for more context.

Personally i got to 4,1 million using dream gear and going full defence. I had Hardened Scars allocated, with Corruption i reach 4,5 million. My actual character from Harvest should have roughly 3,0-3,5 million right now, which is still "easy" to upgrade. (PoB import calculates sth wrong and can't get right numbers, can't find issue too) With elevated mods you can definitely go above 5 million despite full defence.

Min-max for reference, pretty sure i published it already some time ago:
https://pastebin.com/RYv0vdHm

would skitterbots be a nice addition to this build?

"

DankawSL wrote:

PoB import calculates sth wrong and can't get right numbers, can't find issue too

How do I know this? Because when I import it, it says 2,47mil on mapping (remove wither / sirus) and 2,3mil with wither / sirus as the import was set.

I really wanna know cuz mby that means my 2,8mil mapping import from harvest character is wrong too? How do I know how much dps my character did, tooltip won't count debuffs like despair, wither and all the other stuffs I had on that character. I know culling strike isn't counted but I didn't add that.

My gear wasn't perfect cuz I didn't have patience to keep trading for harvest crafts so stuck with some t2 or easier to obtain mods, but it was more than 10ex value Fuksdelux said about.

You piqued my interest saying that dps number in POB might be wrong, I was taking it at face value (the DOT dps part above total).

"

zhepartak wrote:

would skitterbots be a nice addition to this build?

It's worth about 2,5 wither stacks for 35% mana. You can probably use it if you want to go yolo softcore (then also craft aspect of the spider, it's another 15% inc damage on mobs - stacking additively with wither, skitters and second half of despair). The issue is in most cases having defensive auras and dying less is more noticeable than just doing a bit more damage.

Another case of use of skitterbots is levelling and early mapping in trade league with profane proxy for lazy despair. But the fact profane proxy has no life is gonna come around to bite you in the behind, so sooner or later you will want to drop it for a ring with life roll.

The only time I found space for skitterbots was that time I experimented with devouring diadem that lets you squeeze an extra aura and there wasn't anything better to add. But with harvest making -9 chaos aura helmets easy to craft I think that strategy is obsolete.

I am using wither totems with fast casting. I have no problem having totems live through the fights.

I did a a9 sirus without any deaths with very consistent dps. He was taking damage the whole fight.

I am missing maven herself and the uber bosses fights. Did everything else and multiple 10 bosses, all breach lords and so on. Having a blast.

In the breachlords fight you have to get closer to tul and kill him first. The other move too fast so you shoot a arrow in their direction and dash in the same direction. The boss will take damage while chasing. Your totems are alive in the meanwhile.

I started the build in SC SSF, I am now in the middle of yellow maps. So far I really like the build. Just got a six—link bow from ritual and I had only 1 corroded Fossil for the +3 craft and was lucky and hit it first try. So I am pretty happy about that, don‘t have the chaos multiplier craft yet. I hope I get Kintsugi soon, I am now on part 4 of the prophecy chain, hope it continues soon. Uberlab Trials are also pretty unlucky. Level 90 and I am still missing 2. But even without it, its really easy so far. I am really enjoying my first time playing ssf, you have to work for everything, you use everything not just to get currency but to really have value out of it.

And Delve is really cool with the build, permanent phasing and being fast is so nice.

So thank you for the build, lets see how far I can get it in SSF.

As i relevel my CA (almost back at the same level) i noticed something. Prophecy chains seem to always drop at 1st stage. Haven't seen any 2nd part or above from rituals or heists (which i've run a lot for obvious reasons). Considering how few people are even using silver coins (my assumption) this should cause them appear on the market which should very heavily impact prices. When Deadly Rivalry dropped at III-V, it was easy and quick enough to finish the chain.

I'm starting to use my coins now and will see how it goes.

I also have to reconsider worth of +2 arrows on a bow now. Since huge part of it's value was ability to reliably trigger Onslaught (now permanent) and current boss league... i think 35% DoT multi might be the right call now. However you need Empower since 1 arrow with Conc Effect does feel terrible at times.

"

zhepartak wrote:

would skitterbots be a nice addition to this build?

Viktranka already answered.

"

Viktranka wrote:

Spoiler

How do I know this? Because when I import it, it says 2,47mil on mapping (remove wither / sirus) and 2,3mil with wither / sirus as the import was set.

I really wanna know cuz mby that means my 2,8mil mapping import from harvest character is wrong too? How do I know how much dps my character did, tooltip won't count debuffs like despair, wither and all the other stuffs I had on that character. I know culling strike isn't counted but I didn't add that.

My gear wasn't perfect cuz I didn't have patience to keep trading for harvest crafts so stuck with some t2 or easier to obtain mods, but it was more than 10ex value Fuksdelux said about.

You piqued my interest saying that dps number in POB might be wrong, I was taking it at face value (the DOT dps part above total).

Imports are working fine, i simply couldn't figure out where's the issue that causes me to lose so much damage. It was so obvious i forgot to check - cluster jewels have no point allocated on import (and it's not PoB's fault). I don't think PoE.ninja allocates them either but i might be wrong.

How much damage your character deals depends on situation and most common are tooltip dps (In Combat) and boss damage (Effective DPS + Boss OR Shaper). Only if you use Witchfire Brew or -9% res helmet tooltip is incorrect against normal mobs. I prefer tooltips most of all due to how easy you can calculate all other possibilities + no PoB required.

I know it was all to show you can't really get that much damage realistically, i addressed that with "additional context" at the beginning. Since you and KodiakX went quite hard on it i thought i could add some extra context to it.

My gear was entirely self-crafted besides some item bases and 1 Awakener's Orb. I played Harvest more than i should honestly.

"

DankawSL wrote:

So more or less build does it's job. Low boss damage is not because of the build, but from skill itself. You can go other damage ascendancies, but they don't really offer that much more besides Occultist. It's almost all about gear, and with Harvest craftin being core it's now significantly easier to get high damage values.

I never had problems with Wither Totem. If you place right, it'll do the job reliably without being destroyed. Replacing it is quick once you have quality on gems.

If you truly want more damage, you can respec into TR but obviously this build is not optimized for it. Weapon swap exists. It's worth to keep in mind that part of CA's survivability comes from safer playstyle. It's very easy to get greedy and die when using TR.

I have yet to see build's performance in high tier Maven encounters myself. Healing is definitely something that i would rather not encounter. So far i haven't noticed which doesn't mean much since i barely tickled red maps before i died to pathfinding being a little too good.

Yea no complaints over all about the build. It street sweep maps and does okay on bosses with tons of survivability. I'm sure in past leagues especially it was perfectly fine without Maven altering boss fights and in some aspects it's really nice for Maven, such as when you have to avoid a Maven twinned boss mechanics out of no where. The damage held up really well till about T16/guardian/etc where you'll then notice a huge decline if you're still rocking starting league gear.

The issue with Wither totem is there are just some encounters there's no chance it's going to stay up. Like you do a 4 Shaper Guardian Maven encounter where you have Phoenix, Minotaur, Hydra and Chimera up all spamming AOE everywhere and there's no where safe to drop a totem. It's going to be constantly destroyed. Even singular encounters with lots of AOE like Shrine map with Piety chucking out arcs constantly is enough to keep em down majority of the time. All of this is fine, just expected and makes the build playstyle feel more totem oriented than one would think at first glance.