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

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Posid wrote:

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ressiv wrote:

Hey, sorry if this has been asked before, but how is this build doing in SSF? Seems a lot of gear is craftable in SSF (except the chest). And which ascendancy you recommend for SSF?

Edit: just noticed it's HC, I am playing SC. Is there a big difference in the tree?

Thinking of switching to this build from Toxic Rain, not liking the playstyle and the constant standing still which kills you.

Perfectly suitable for SSF. Things that the build rely on are not required for the build to function, they just make it stronger. And things like Kintsugi are farmable fairly reliably even in SSF. The author has played it a lot in SSFHC previously.

As for SC or HC it's just a matter of how many offensive nodes you'll take on the tree early. You can skimp a bit on max life if you want in softcore. I play in softcore and in general the build feels a lot better to play with all the defenses built in, if you start to skimp on things like evasion and get below the evasion cap it starts to feel a lot worse.

I was running around in T5 maps with 2.9k life full clearing deliriums etc. and I still had less than 5 deaths in maps by level 85. I prefer getting most of the damage nodes early in softcore for clear speed, it can be a bit rough to get damage initially and getting the damage nodes really help and the high evasion + dodge does amazing things by itself. It's just not really viable to do in HC because of the RNG factor.

Thanks a lot for the thorough reply! Sounds nice! Think I am going to switch soon then from my toxic rain deadeye :)

What map level are you currently playing with your gear? Are you having a hard time or?

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ressiv wrote:

Spoiler

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Posid wrote:

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ressiv wrote:

Hey, sorry if this has been asked before, but how is this build doing in SSF? Seems a lot of gear is craftable in SSF (except the chest). And which ascendancy you recommend for SSF?

Edit: just noticed it's HC, I am playing SC. Is there a big difference in the tree?

Thinking of switching to this build from Toxic Rain, not liking the playstyle and the constant standing still which kills you.

Perfectly suitable for SSF. Things that the build rely on are not required for the build to function, they just make it stronger. And things like Kintsugi are farmable fairly reliably even in SSF. The author has played it a lot in SSFHC previously.

As for SC or HC it's just a matter of how many offensive nodes you'll take on the tree early. You can skimp a bit on max life if you want in softcore. I play in softcore and in general the build feels a lot better to play with all the defenses built in, if you start to skimp on things like evasion and get below the evasion cap it starts to feel a lot worse.

I was running around in T5 maps with 2.9k life full clearing deliriums etc. and I still had less than 5 deaths in maps by level 85. I prefer getting most of the damage nodes early in softcore for clear speed, it can be a bit rough to get damage initially and getting the damage nodes really help and the high evasion + dodge does amazing things by itself. It's just not really viable to do in HC because of the RNG factor.

Thanks a lot for the thorough reply! Sounds nice! Think I am going to switch soon then from my toxic rain deadeye :)

What map level are you currently playing with your gear? Are you having a hard time or?

Haven't gone above t8 so far, but I did that without any problems. it's smooth sailing pretty much.

All of my gear outside of the bow is "ethical SSF style". Identified or gambled/Rog crafted. Outside of the 5l bow I think my gear is a pretty good representation of what you can expect in SSF. Kintsugi was self farmed because I got lucky with the deadly rivalry prophecies and boots dropped in 3rd atziri kill. For early SSF you can still reasonably expect a 5l bow with +2 to bow skills and a chaos dot multi craft.

All of my currency has been funneled into my bow project which is just 6ex short now :)

Changelog, July 30th, 2021

Still playing a little each day, progressing slowly but steadily. Only level 84, got lucky with 5-link drop and two 5-link recipes from harvest... on a first map. Good start, no issues whatsoever so far.

Personally i'm disappointed how GGG lowered mana costs. Other than some edge cases, solving mana problem was trivial if you only gave it some thought. Now it seems to me that we returned to trivial mana costs once again. Change to flask immunity duration seems pretty good, does it's job fairly without being braindead like before. GGG might've undertuned them on purpose, so community is less angry after partially reverting the changes.

Recently i found out that Instilling and Enkindling Orbs work only on utility flasks... there goes my 4 life flask auto-immunity solution. I totally understand why they don't work on life/mana flasks. Would be broken if you ask me.

I have mixed feelings on Expedition so far. I found 3 logbooks which i didn't touch yet. In maps i didn't see anything interesting outside of fractured items. Gwennen feels horrible to use, she was significantly more useful early on for easy levelling uniques. Rog probably ruined more items than he helped to make with his crafting, and his wares seem to be capped at ilvl 80-83 (i might be wrong and they could go up... maybe?). Tujen is... fine i guess. I'm still in white maps so things can still change... hopefully.

All questions were answered so i'm not responding to anyone this time.

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DankawSL wrote:

Recently i found out that Instilling and Enkindling Orbs work only on utility flasks... there goes my 4 life flask auto-immunity solution. I totally understand why they don't work on life/mana flasks. Would be broken if you ask me.

Some guy found out that if you play with high chaos res / divine flesh, you can use forbidden taste + "cast when savage hit taken" orb for a fairly good recovery mechanic. Forbidden taste is on quartz base, not life, so orbs can be applied.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcygczohlrA (Btw he first claimed that the flask can heal you from 1-shot hit but then was proven wrong and wrote in comments it won't protect from a true 1-shot.)

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Viktranka wrote:

Spoiler

Some guy found out that if you play with high chaos res / divine flesh, you can use forbidden taste + "cast when savage hit taken" orb for a fairly good recovery mechanic. Forbidden taste is on quartz base, not life, so orbs can be applied.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcygczohlrA (Btw he first claimed that the flask can heal you from 1-shot hit but then was proven wrong and wrote in comments it won't protect from a true 1-shot.)

My plan was to play around effective removal of ailment immunity for non-Raider ascendancies. This was something i thought about using on my gladiator build (since it's more or less glass cannon). Life flasks were necessary for this, as their flask cost is significantly lower than utility flasks (Hallowed Life Flask in particular). However this dream was ruined.

I thought about using Forbidden Taste for Raider, but figured it might not be the best idea until very end game (chaos res required). There's also another problem which is visibly reduced flask charge generation on normal/rare monsters. It wasn't in patch notes, but pretty sure GGG mentioned it during league reveal. With Primal Spirit and Druidic Route, i could spam utility flask and would easily sustain them. Now i often run out of them despite this extra investment. However in juiced maps and when you reach high avoidance, this should be one of best investments you can make.

Speaking of flasks, those two new clusters look pretty good honestly. I would've taken them, but Natural Remedies is not on the path and Careful Conservationist doesn't seem as efficient as Druidic Route. Not like i heavily rely on flasks in the first place.

Also something worth thinking about. Recently GGG buffed veiled modifiers, Amethyst Ring implicit and catalysts are not removed so easily now. This gives an opportunity to craft ring with up to 111% chaos resistance. It would look like this:

* Amethyst Ring - 23%
* Chaos res - 35%
* Veiled chaos res - 20% (+20% of elemental res)
* Crafted chaos res - 15% (+15% of elemental res)
* Prismatic catalyst - 93%*0,2 = 18% (assuming perfectly divined ring)

Seems quite worth to me, but getting good health on top of that would be quite hard.

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Boerz wrote:

Do you guys know if it is possible to only get Desert Spring as T7 map? I don't really know if it is possible to set it up that way.
What are your tactics to farm the Imperial Legacy cards?

I completely forgot this question, sorry about that.

Strategy changes every atlas shuffle. It doesn't matter how you do it, end result that is getting a lot of Desert Springs is what matters. Making Desert Spring the only map of it's tier, farming adjacent maps in a region are the most obvious strategies. If i were to list every single one, that would take me quite long time and probably confuse you.

Now i uncovered where Desert Spring is (Haewark Hamlet, 1 watchstone) and in my case, best i can do now to is make this region the only one with single watchstone, complete adjacent maps and hope to abuse non-completed adjacent maps drop bonus. Long term, favoriting Desert Spring is also decent idea.

Most efficient strategy would be completing only Chateu and Desert Spring, leave it as the only region with 1 watchstone. As you progress through atlas, you'll get A LOT of them.

Hello! really loving the build, just quick tip that I have seen before, since steelskin is instantaneous you can slot it in you movement input (left click) and it will autoactivate while you walk, no need for cwdt. sorry if you already knew and Im missing something.

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dsf000 wrote:

Hello! really loving the build, just quick tip that I have seen before, since steelskin is instantaneous you can slot it in you movement input (left click) and it will autoactivate while you walk, no need for cwdt. sorry if you already knew and Im missing something.

You can, but since this build is designed to be rarely hit you have a high chance of wasting your steelskin when not being hit and then not having it when you do get hit.

The cwdt is meant to protect you from a 2-shot, if you take 1 hit wind dancer will reduce it but a second hit in a row will not be reduced so cwdt can theoretically save your life (if the consecutive hit lands and doesn't 1-shot you).

So last question for this build (sry extrem bad english but i try it) So we USE TR in the leveling phase for Only bossing and CA for clear? and i start with maps i use only CA for the rest of the game ? ^^ and can i play with deadeye to is it good enough to for do t16 ?

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Thesorrow10 wrote:

and can i play with deadeye to is it good enough to for do t16 ?

Deadeye is only good if you play toxic rain main skill. You can check Remi's guide for Toxic Rain Deadeye if you want to go that way. It starts similarly but goes different way than pure Caustic Arrow build.

Deadeye is good for 3 mirage archers that stack Toxic Rain on top of each other. Caustic Arrow doesn't stack. Boss standing in 1 takes same damage as standing in 3 of them. This is different for Toxic Rain where each copy of the ability stacks in damage.

Raider is picked because it gets evasion, dodge and movement speed, not for damage.

Yes, you can clear most content with just Caustic Arrow but if you get to end game bosses like Sirus and Maven expect it to be slow and require high gear investment to survive (because you can't 1-shot bosses you need a lot of survivability).

It has different playstyle. Caustic Arrow is slower, but you can move more and dodge abilities. Toxic Rain does more damage if you stand still and keep shooting it, but if you have to move, you lose more damage, and if you stand still, there's high chance something will hit you and you may die.

So Caustic Arrow = slower and safer, Toxic Rain = faster but more risky.

Yes, while levelling you use both.

I've used this build for probably about 4 leagues and enjoy it. How much dps and especially single target dps would you say was nerfed? 20%? 50%? Your changelog says updated from moderate to low. I'm concerned. Thanks.