Chaos Pathfinder: Caustic Arrow or Toxic Rain?
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I'm only level 35, but so far Caustic Arrow is outperforming Toxic Rain in almost all areas, so why are so many people insisting that Caustic Arrow is garbage? Does it taper off at higher levels? Does Toxic Rain just make a leap forward once you have better gear and skills? Am I just missing something completely?
Maybe my links are crap? Caustic Arrow - Lesser Multiple Projectiles - Faster Attacks - Vicious Projectiles - Void Manipulation - Lesser Poison Toxic Rain - Faster Attacks - Vicious Projectiles - Void Manipulation - Lesser Poison - Mirage Archer Highest Character: Level 92 86% Block/Static Strike Champion - Abyss League I get bored of the grind around 90, probably won't ever get a higher character. Last bumped on Sep 9, 2018, 4:03:01 PM
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well depends on what you're doing
CA out performs TR early on because its DoT scales on its own and doesn't need a good weapon, and its DoT is much higher than TR. TR is much better than CA in the DoT department if you use quill rain and can sustain the mana cost. TR should easily out perform CA if you're focusing on poison, because it will stack poison much much faster because it hits so much more often with its overlapping pod explosions after the initial hit. if you're going for pure hit damage, i dunno they're probably about the same, maybe TR comes out ahead. so depends on what type of way you're trying to scale them. for leveling though, DoT is the way to go because again its much less gear dependent. |
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Thanks xMustard, for actually explaining things. When I asked in game I just got flat "Caustic Arrow is shit" replies.
Highest Character: Level 92 86% Block/Static Strike Champion - Abyss League
I get bored of the grind around 90, probably won't ever get a higher character. |
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caustic arrow is far from shit. its fucking retarded. there is a guide on these forums on the front page (last i checked) where he is crit chin sol caustic arrow focusing the initial hit, because it has very big aoe explosions to it so you can easily overlap them....and ya the damage is nuts.
im a build that is 6L toxic rain, and 4L+1 from elder helm caustic arrow build focusing around the DoT side of things, and caustic arrow is VERY VERY present in my build. so far i've done up to t13 maps and the damage is still crazy. i don't even have a wither spell totem in my links yet, or vaal blight or anything, and im demolishing everything. yellow tier elder and all his guardians were a joke. toxic rain is much more fun than caustic arrow, but CA dot dmg is nuts right now. its dmg will probably not really taper off, depending on gear. im sure it'll take awhile to do guardians for me, but im sure i'll be relatively safe as im quite defensive as an 8k life BM evasion tank raider. |
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" How's the mana sustain on your build? Going BM looks interesting since I'm not scaling poison myself. I'm in the process of leveling a trickster atm, but might switch over if it doesn't feel great. |
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well the sustain is completely fine, since i am blood magic. i have pretty significant regen especially when i wear a kaom's (swap chests depending what im doing).
being able to preload the ground full of TR pods while waiting for boss to spawn or phase to end etc is a huge benefit. ya since i decided not to scale poison, but wanted to scale the DoT because it was my league starter and i didn't want to require a good weapon, i decided to not go pathfinder since its more focused for poison. i chose raider over trickster because of the defensive benefits. as its playing out, i was right in my assumption that damage plays just fine in the very low levels of delve, but what gives out is defense. only problem is what actually gives out first is your ability to farm enough sulphite to get down so deep, haha |
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" Wow I completely blacked out with the BM-thing. Been a long while since I actually used it that I semi-forgot the entire point lol. I was questioning to go raider as well for the frenzies and the onslaught path. Although I think trickster's defensive capabilities are also pretty nice. Little bit of reduced damage/ DoT and life/mana on kill. That's what tilted me a bit more to trickster, since I'm guessing you're solely relying on life flask(s) to heal back up to full? |
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" i personally really dislike relying on any type of on kill mechanic, because you won't be coming into problems vs trash, but vs bosses, and in delves case invulnerable mobs that you can't kill anyway. so where is tricksters defensive mechanics there i do use a nice pot, since i have no mana it works perfect. for everything i've faced so far this heals me up perfectly fine. if i start taking more damage than i need to, i can always move. i've so far mostly facetanked everything to delve 150 and tier 13 if i get in actual trouble, i have a barrage and life gain on hit setup which really tops me fast as fuck. im a little gem starved though, but i think instead of a wither spell totem i'll have a dedicated 4L as barrage, gmp, life gain on hit, additional accuracy. i get no accuracy so its poo, but you don't need it when focusing DoT dmg |
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" Yeah I can relate to that, It's a nice extra though, but for sure not as defensive as raider. From what I see, you could use your boots for a RAT-barrage-withering touch- GMP perhaps. I haven't tested it myself but apparantly it's faster/better to get your wither stacks up than the classic spell totem. |
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What about Deadeye Toxic Rain? Lot of people in game talking about it as an alternative to Pathfinder. Any ideas?
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