[3.6] Acid Molten Strike Assassin - Uber Elder-viable Poison Build

This claw is better than wasp?

Going with Volkuurs.

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magicrectangle wrote:

What are you guys doing about getting one-rounded by enemies in deep delves?

Loreweave and a good life pool (about 6.7k is a good baseline). Temp Chains really pulls its weight basically having enemy dps. Your MS projectiles should be well into giving you life back before they can get a shot off. Make sure you also run with Arctic Armour.

I'm specifically concerned about one-shots in deep delves. Enemy DPS isn't really a problem because of life gain on hit, it is just the one round kills that need to be addressed.

I'm sitting at 6.4k life, but there's room to improve if I get elder rings, since I'm still using thief's torment at the moment.

I suppose dropping the acrobatics tank for a granite flask of iron skin is worth trying, though I think a lot of the one-shots are elemental, despite loreweave.

Loreweave isn't nearly as useful in deep delves as it is in maps. Delves don't have -max resist applied to players (which loreweave negates). Instead, they have "enemy damage penetrates x% of elemental resistances." Loreweave does NOT negate that (though it does at least start you out at 80 before penetrating, so it isn't completely useless).

Trundling along in SSF; managed to turn my first Ancient Orb (via Fortune Favours / Zana mission Harbinger spam) into a Lycosidae, thank god. Managed to swap out my Tabula for a Dapper Prodigy 6L; about a third of the way towards Loreweave atm.

With regards to crafting LGOH on Elder rings - I'm guessing best practise is to alt/aug until you hit T1 LGOH, then Regal / mastercraft. Has anyone experimented with using Pristine Fossils to see if it's more likely to roll LOGH via the Life tag (c.f. http://poedb.tw/us/mod.php?cn=Ring)?

Also, what would be the easiest no-splash single-target skill swap for getting challenges like "Defeat Tul with 4 Crystal totems active" done? Viper Strike?

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magicrectangle wrote:

I'm specifically concerned about one-shots in deep delves. Enemy DPS isn't really a problem because of life gain on hit, it is just the one round kills that need to be addressed.

I'm sitting at 6.4k life, but there's room to improve if I get elder rings, since I'm still using thief's torment at the moment.

I suppose dropping the acrobatics tank for a granite flask of iron skin is worth trying, though I think a lot of the one-shots are elemental, despite loreweave.

Loreweave isn't nearly as useful in deep delves as it is in maps. Delves don't have -max resist applied to players (which loreweave negates). Instead, they have "enemy damage penetrates x% of elemental resistances." Loreweave does NOT negate that (though it does at least start you out at 80 before penetrating, so it isn't completely useless).

I put together a build in POB merging my best gear from this league and standard and pretty much capped out at ~7k. With Loreweave, I can't really see much more than that (Vulkuur's build). If you want a bigger life pool, you'll have to roll with a Belly. That should cap you out at about 7.8k HP. Plenty tanky. The added ele resists on the chest will also likely afford you to run with Kaom's Roots for even more life. Movement speed tanks but that's what Shield Charge is for. I bet you can get it capped out to just north of 8k.

Loreweave is good everywhere. You can't cheat ele pen. If you uncap, it won't penetrate much but the initial hit will hit you like a truck. If you overcap (like Loreweave does), then it'll penetrate like a knife in your side but the initial hit will be far less threatening.

Walking around with 80% ele resists is insane if you understand that every point is a multiplicative gain, getting better the higher you go. 78% is an astronomical gain over 77%. I know it doesn't seem like much. The only reason not to run Loreweave is on specific fights where you can overcap beyond 80%. Say like Elder which only does phys and cold. You can get your cold resist up to 86%, even higher with trickery. Loreweave won't let you go higher.

If you sit down and do the math, on big hits, I'm pretty sure Loreweave will still pull ahead on eHP vs Belly with regards to ele damage. Not the case obviously with physical.

I haven't looked into what the monsters hit with in the mines but I'm pretty sure they range depending on the area. Some fire, some cold, etc. You can tell by the color of the zones.


With all that said, you can't cheat one shots in this game. No matter what you do, go high enough in difficulty and something will kill you. Doesn't matter. Play around it is all you can do.

I'm familiar with the math. I was hoping somebody who was down in the 400+ range had some practical experience with what was working for them.

I've considered belly + tri-purity. Put flasks on top of that and as you say, 86% or even higher (aura effect / flask effect) resist is possible. It would mean giving up a lot of damage (from loreweave, from anger, and from herald of agony), but may just end up being necessary deeper down.

Also considered lightning coil (or shaper pseudo lightning coil). If I'm stacking tri-purity then might as well use it to help mitigate some physical damage as well. Unsure whether the HP trade-off works out in my favor there. I'm hoping maybe somebody has tried either idea out already and could relate how well it is working for them.

I don't like to die. The current setup is safe enough to farm double-beyond elder haunted mansions, but delves are starting to get a bit more dangerous than that. Especially the elemental penetration modded areas (and especially if they have crit mod also, though if they have both I will try to route-around if I can).

The depth doesn't matter beyond ~230 (or 250 I forget where it caps). It caps out at level 81, just like the highest tier maps. Running at 500 is the same as running at 300.

My build works for me. I have only died twice in the depths and once was me being stupid and running into a pack in the dark and the other a one shot. Like I said, it's eventually going to get you. DD, a crit, whatever. If you don't like that, party up and run with 20k ES lol.

I should note that outside of the MS set up, I tailored my build differently. Opting out of Acrobatics but also running with Molten Shell given that it's now an instant skill. Ups my armor to a decent 24%. Always up and at quality, it also ignites which is a nice bonus.

I wouldn't run with Anger myself unless of course you've got a temp chains corrupted glove. While a nice boost to DPS you should be getting enough from quality gear. It also robs you of too much defense.

OP's POB shows ~65k poison per projectile (no flasks) and he took down Uber Elder, which is pretty much on par with Uber Atziri for difficulty. I'm already up to 150k and I could still eek out another 20k if I got all my ducks in a row.

It honestly sounds like you are way too much of a glass cannon.

Arctic Armour
Fortify
IC
Temp Chains
Flasks
80% resists
7k HP
~50 LOH @ ~7.5 AS
3k Armor
500 life regen
30% block chance
20% evasion

I mean I don't see very much more you can do for defense really.

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The depth doesn't matter beyond ~230 (or 250 I forget where it caps). It caps out at level 81, just like the highest tier maps. Running at 500 is the same as running at 300.

T16 maps are monster level 83. Delve reaches level 83 at depth 270. However, delve difficulty continues to scale past that, it just doesn't increase monster level.

I'm not a glass cannon at all really, but I did lean into the dodge and evasion tank side of things. 50% dodge, 40% spell dodge and stibnite blind cloud is an incredibly effective tank so long as nothing is able to one-hit-kill you, which in T16s works great. But there are things that can one-hit kill me in deeper delves. Not often enough that it is a huge problem yet, but I'd rather head it off before it becomes one. That's why I'm seeking advice from people who have done that content already.

I thank you for your input, swapping dodge tank for mitigation tank is definitely on the list of things to try. I'm also very familiar with the theory-craft already, and don't really need any further help with that. I'm more looking for first hand experience from people who are actually doing the deeper delve content, and what they've found to work.

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magicrectangle wrote:

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The depth doesn't matter beyond ~230 (or 250 I forget where it caps). It caps out at level 81, just like the highest tier maps. Running at 500 is the same as running at 300.

I'm more looking for first hand experience from people who are actually doing the deeper delve content, and what they've found to work.

o/ I'm at rank 258 (429) if that matters, though I haven't done much delving since friday.

First let me says this: armour is not a bad stat, but is a horrible decision for both this build and deeper delving.
The way it works is that:
a) it gets worse the higher damage you get hit for
b) it really starts to shine once you get extra %phys reduction on top (i.e. Endurance Charges)
It's not easy to get large amounts of armour on this build, and you wouldn't really need it anyway because evasion, dodge and lgoh is enough for smaller hits.
After unspeccing Acrobatics, a whole granite flask will give you a 6% damage reduction against a 7k hit, where's taking Acrobatics is a net reduction of 21% for one skill point.
In theory, yes, Dodge won't help you much against oneshots, but it stil reduces your chances of dying at a low investment. If you watch my Uber Elder or Shaper videos, you can see some parts where I would have died without Phase Acro.

From my experience up until now, it depends a bit on the area, but the most lethal damage types in delves are cold, lightning and physical, so it's mostly equal between elemental and phys.

The best way for this build to go against physical oneshots it with damage shifts (Taste of Hate, Lightning Coil, etc.) and percent-based reduction (Endurance Charges, Arctic Armour, Gruthkul Pantheon, Basalt Flask).
Against elemental oneshots, the only thing you can really do is to stack high resistances, either with Loreweave or via Purities and Flasks like this guy does it (this is a really good example of how to go at deep delving btw).

On top of that, 95% of delve encounters are "wave-defense" against non-unique enemies, which means curses (especially Enfeeble and Despair) are very effective.
It also means that you'll get a ton of hits in, which results in huge poison duration (-> you can afford to give up damage) and life on hit (-> you could probably drop TT/Elder rings to get more room on your gear).

In the end a small tip, it's very helpful to Shield Charge around every 1-2 seconds and not just stand still and facetank. This will get you out of many AoE spells and keep fortify up.
You can also prevent the "Storm Call" of the baby spiders by removing their corpses if that's an issue for you (hasn't been for me).

_Tiem can you share a PoB of your gear or something similar? Curious how you're getting that much survivability and damage.

Not the best here but this feels like an upgrade over my wasp nest thus far. Thoughts?

I also finally got and shep you were right, that 6th link makes a huge difference!