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

Played the build a few times now - such a great build; I keep coming back to it as it's just so solid, zoomy, and fun to play (I love DoT builds).

Started this league as my first venture into SSF. It's going fine, but man it's harder to gear as it mostly just revolves around pumping levels into CA, which is difficult to do on SSF - especially with the changes not long ago to Imperial Legacy (having no luck 6 linking anything at the moment). Was considering trying to farm Desert Spring for the cards but I did 3 juiced maps and got no IL cards which sucked.

Really fun though, definitely going to get longer out of the build this league. Current strategy is trying to gamble for a Hunter influence amulet, general farming for fuses, and delving to get fossils for a +3 craft for the bow I'm working on. Still no Empower gem either!

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reetismatic wrote:

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.

It depends on your set-up (such as whether you use cluster jewels), but I'd wager around 20% to 40% for most people. Such as the last season I did this build I ended up with around 1.8 mil PoB DoT DPS (vs. Sirus), and post-nerf with the exact same gear and tree, I had 1.3 mil. It's still enough DPS to do all content though.

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reetismatic wrote:

How much dps and especially single target dps would you say was nerfed? 20%? 50%?

Importing my ritual character to pob it says ~1.4 mil Sirus dps with max wither, I think it was around 2mil before? The difference is obviously it's MUCH harder to get the same level of gear as in Ritual because of no harvest crafting (the build wasn't "min maxed" but I sank probably around 50ex into it back then).

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Zarasi wrote:

It depends on your set-up (such as whether you use cluster jewels), but I'd wager around 20% to 40% for most people. Such as the last season I did this build I ended up with around 1.8 mil PoB DoT DPS (vs. Sirus), and post-nerf with the exact same gear and tree, I had 1.3 mil.

I assume that character is your lvl 98 Raider, I see you had no clusters while I had 1 cluster setup, do you think they don't add that much, esp. now after nerfs? I'm surprised your dps difference is only 200k pre nerf and 100k post nerf despite no clusters, so I'm wondering.

This season chaos clusters are expensive because not only toxic rain was a popular starter, but we also compete for the same clusters with the new forbidden rite totems build. I'm probably gonna go for 24 challenges and stop, I'm thinking at that point it's not worth investing in clusters... not sure.

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Viktranka wrote:

I assume that character is your lvl 98 Raider, I see you had no clusters while I had 1 cluster setup, do you think they don't add that much, esp. now after nerfs? I'm surprised your dps difference is only 200k pre nerf and 100k post nerf despite no clusters, so I'm wondering.

This season chaos clusters are expensive because not only toxic rain was a popular starter, but we also compete for the same clusters with the new forbidden rite totems build. I'm probably gonna go for 24 challenges and stop, I'm thinking at that point it's not worth investing in clusters... not sure.

Aye, that was my 98 Raider. I didn't bother with clusters that season, mostly just due to that I was happy with how the character was performing. Clusters did do chunky damage though and would have added another million DoT DPS or so that season - but I'm not sure how they are doing at the moment. When I play this build I usually have a PoB running for you, DankawSL, and Posid to see what others are doing and, if I remember right, Posid usually goes Clusters and their damage is usually a good chunk higher.

It was a good run, but unfortunately i died today. It was my fault, easily avoidable. Small rundown in rip clip as usual. TL;DR Shouldn't backtrack, but i had no idea these monsters deal damage (they always died in previous patches). Powerful Crits is the cherry at the top which killed me.

HCSSF Lvl 91 RIP - Powerful Crits claim another soul

What i noticed this league overall, most things i noticed are tightly connected:

Much lower damage output - I mean, we all know this would happen. I didn't expect it to this degree. Inability to get quick 6-link bow certainly helped this. Bosses would easily take almost double the usual time it took me to kill them because of this.

Significantly more hits taken - This was given as well. Nerfed Jade flask and flask sustain, which makes it harder to cap it. Not having Quartz flask contributed greatly too. It's also because of lower damage as well, as monsters will have more time to attack and potentially hit me. Could've as well run Wind Dancer as i got hit too often anyway, 20% evasion would definitely help.

Revamped gems and their problem - I felt Swift Affliction duration nerf. Duration is not damage increase, but the more you have the more actions you can do before having to reapply degen. It does increase damage indirectly, when you couldn't reapply degen on time. Since i didn't run Malevolence yet which further made it a problem.

Duration issues combined with constant damage taken that i couldn't outregen that easily certainly made it obvious for me - Damage on Full Life should be 6th gem and Efficacy the 5th. Of course Concentrated Effect still remains an option, been a while since i used it honestly. DoFL right now was simply not reliable enough in my opinion.

Couple of optimizations - Other than what i mentioned, right now i spend 5 points on Crystal Skin cluster and say that ignite avoidance is optional. That still holds true, but i figured an obvious a way to get full immunity with 4 points. Harvest jewel implicits, 10% chance to avoid ignite/shock. Should've thought about it earlier.

I'll cap Wither at lvl 10. I was thinking about it in back in Heist when they changed Despair intelligence requirement, but i completely forgot about it later. Doesn't help i didn't play much that league. One league GGG completely destroyed totem AI and then "fixed" it. Right now if there's multiple targets... well, Wither totem sucks. Still BiS against a single target, mind you. Because of this i might add Anomalous Withering Step to optional setups too, but i'll play around with it first.

Overall, those who follow the build know i was (and still am) burning out of PoE, so my guides suffered as a result. Not much but still. It's also easy to fall into "This is fine, no reason to change it" mentality, especially when guide is that big. Well, time to get to work. Been a while since i played CA Raider for real.


About expedition league - it's alright. Tujen still good. I finally crafted some really good stuff with Rog. Gwennen mostly crap but there is a chance to get an influenced base you're looking for. Did fair amount of logbooks and they're cool minigame, but i can't say i'm impressed by them like other people seem to be. Can't judge loot as i only did level 73 at best.

Yeah, i feel like balancing defense and damage is much more a thing now. And i kinda like i have to try a lot and search for a sweetspot again. You really feel your choices of passives and gear again.

Thanks for the guide!

Just ripped level 93 SSFHC against Sirus (awakener level 0). Got blasted in a "die" beam.

Was a good run though. Would be easy with a 6L I think but unfortunately that did not happen. Had to try with 5L.

My strongest SSFHC run so far at least!

retracted.

Thanks for the guide!

This is the first league I play for real, and I have been having fun with this build.

Well, I'm trying to go 36/40 this league since the mtx is sooooooo great, and now I'm grinding for the 'Defeat Medved conditionally' challenge, but I'm stuck at deafeating him without killing any summoned cultist since using southbound just doesn't work (CA's toxic ground is not counted at 'hit'), so can you guys give me some tips/trick that would work? thanks!

I love this build, I am using it and having fun, my ranger is lvl 15. But I had a problem with act 1 boss the meviel (or what ever her name is). She's Chaos and Elemental Resist. The build is very Chaos type damage based...