(3.14) Toxic Rain + Caustic Arrow | 5-10m Sirus DPS | Fast + Durable | 50c Budget/SSF Uber Elder

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Justy311 wrote:

I know i'm kind of late to the party, but why Blood and Sand? Just for the added 11% damage reduction? Or are you running it for Maim?

Yes, just for the damage reduction, I'm not even sure if the 3.8 version includes it anymore.

If you don't need the defensive powers of it feel free to swap to Aspect of the Spider or anything else you can get use of.

OK, there's actually a portion of the guide that talks about it:

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Legion brought with it an absolute ass-blasting amount of off-screening physical based hits. I made the switch to a basalt and incorporated Flesh and Stone to mitigate some of this. As legion is (mostly) making its way out, Blight seems to be more elemental in what's been showed so far. Dropping the Basalt and Flesh and Stone and returning to Stibnite + Aspect of the Spider or a juicy investment for Grace is likely the play.

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IF you are planning on spending a bit of currency, I'd recommend dropping Flesh and Stone and adding Grace into the mix up. You'll need to invest in mana reservation to make this work, however, I believe its worthwhile.

The base will be something like this: https://pastebin.com/xFE0BXn9

You'll need to find one additional source of mana reservation, whether that's Conquerer's Potency, Jewel 1% corruptions, Influence 4% node, reduced reserve % on amulet, using an Oil for Sovereign, or a Grace/Discipline/Malevolence reduced reserve enchant on the Helmet (likely the option I'll look for at the beginning). With one of the larger sources (Sovereign or a helmet enchant) a level 3 enlighten should be all that's needed. Play around with your mana until it fits. There's many ways to skin a cat; find one that works for you.

Just a quick info the Xopec´s - mana mod cant be stacked anymore with the elreon craft.
Just spended way to much currency on buying a good rolled one of those xD
Maybe edit it in the ring section so other people dont have to learn it the hard way like i did.
Btw enjoying your build a lot, thx for it.

Awesome. And yeah, Sand form blinds close up and reduces damage from far away. That's what I assumed it was for, but it seemed like Grace would be the better way to go and synergize better. But Grace does take more mana so I see the point.

One question though. How in the world do you deal with chaos damage without inoculation? Alva's missions seem difficult right now, though admittedly I'm only level 58 and not fully built yet.

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Justy311 wrote:

Alva's missions seem difficult right now,

I had similar issue last league so started searching and found out posts back from incursion season that the "small plant things" that spit stuff is a "physical spell projectile partially converted to chaos" (50 or 60% can't remember well). So yeah, getting that 66% spell dodge basically removes 2/3rds of the damage you'll take from them.

Soul of Shakari and later upgraded Soul of Lunaris (the extra chance to dodge) was my choice too and they both help in this scenario.

P.S. Remember even if you can't fit Grace into your mana reservation this doesn't prevent you from using Vaal Grace and that's basically free dodge cooldown, not sure how that's for incursions because I reckon Vaal souls reset when you enter them, but for general purpose usage.

Thank you! I can't use my boots just yet, but hopefully when I can it'll be better. I even use Withering Step right now for the extra elusive buff (and a good amount of instant wither stack). I've just been shredded a few times at the start of an incursion. Hopefully with better gear/Higher HP it'll feel better. I can finally wear my QOTF now too! :-)

So far it's going well. Better than my Impale Champion build... I was so happy when I got a decent Arborix... then it took away all my evasion every 8 seconds and it just wasn't my play style. lol

Build is an A+.

Had alot of fun with it! even after the Trickster nerfs, it fells pretty tanky. The only thing that could kill u are DOT effects.
Did every Boss possible and got my first Headhunter ever.



Thanks for the build!!!

Okay. I'm going to try and pick your brains a bit since you guys definitely seem to know more than me. I don't have a HH, not even close, so I was using a 'The Nomad'

Rarity: Unique
The Nomad
Studded Belt
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Requirements:
Level: 48
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Item Level: 78
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23% increased Stun Duration on Enemies
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+41 to Strength
+48 to Dexterity
36% increased Global Physical Damage
50% increased Flask Charges gained
+22% to all Elemental Resistances while you have at least 200 Strength
49% increased Projectile Attack Damage while you have at least 200 Dexterity
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Few men can guide their people
like the Great Meginord of the North

Which should give me almost 50% more projectile damage because I have way over 200 dex... and according to toxic rain projectile damage is supposed to be applied to the DOT, but when I put on the belt it doesn't boost the DOT damage at all. Any idea why? Does the belt just not work with a Toxic Rain build?

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Justy311 wrote:

49% increased Projectile Attack Damage while you have at least 200 Dexterity

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Justy311 wrote:

Which should give me almost 50% more projectile damage because I have way over 200 dex... and according to toxic rain projectile damage is supposed to be applied to the DOT, but when I put on the belt it doesn't boost the DOT damage at all. Any idea why? Does the belt just not work with a Toxic Rain build?

According to my POB testing, indeed "projectile attack damage" stat does NOT work on the DOT dps portion while "projectile damage" stat DOES work. That's assuming I can trust POB of course. Nodes tested: 1st small node from "Longshot" wheel and 1st small node from "Fury Bolts" wheel.

Could be the same issue as someone described earlier about quiver not adding damage, I assume things that have extra restrictions like "attacks" or "with weapon" in description might be excluded from applying to the dot portion.

Unfortunately I couldn't find a rare quiver with any mods related to projectile damage to compare, but I checked in POB with unique quivers that have "projectile damage" (without any other extra words) which are Rigwalds Quills and Rearguard, and these do apply to DOT dps.

Seems a bit counter intuitive, but that's the only conclusion I could come to, that the mod needs to say "projectile damage" exactly without any extra words added.

Anyway, I'd highly recommend to change that belt for something else, it doesn't have any useful qualities for this build as you probably won't even get the resistances bonus from it as reaching 200 str is neither easy nor necessary in this build.

If you really want a damage increasing mod on your belt it should be possible to craft one with aberrant fossils to hit increased chaos damage mod, something like what this guy uses:
https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/%EC%9D%B8%ED%98%81%EC%A7%84/OnTheKill?i=1&search=skill%3DToxic-Rain

However I'd say outside of absolute min-maxing damage scenario, belt is one of the spots that can safely be used to cap resists and get required life / es / evasion numbers, to have more leeway in your amulet / rings / gloves. Especially if you stick to the guide and use unique helmet / boots you will want good resistances on the rare item slots.

Thanks. Yeah, when I noticed I wasn't going to getthe damage I bought a stygian vice with ES, some Res to cap me, and some bonus flask charges gained and stuck a mana regen eye in it for another 2.9 mana per second. XD

I also managed to get ar eally nice Watcher's eye that had 12% physical damage taken as lightning damage with Purity of Elements, so I swapped Flesh and Stone for Purity of Elements. Seems to work pretty well. (Oh it also has 2.4 ES regen per second with Discipline and immune to bleed with Malevolence. I got lucky, it wasn't that expensive either.)


I did wonder something though. What's the major difference between Toxic Rain and Caustic Arrow? I notice the damage mod base on Caustic Arrow is insane now. LIke it's sitting at 90k dot damage while my toxic rain says around 18k. Is it really that much stronger or does the tool tip lie?

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Justy311 wrote:

Thanks. Yeah, when I noticed I wasn't going to getthe damage I bought a stygian vice with ES, some Res to cap me, and some bonus flask charges gained and stuck a mana regen eye in it for another 2.9 mana per second. XD

I also managed to get ar eally nice Watcher's eye that had 12% physical damage taken as lightning damage with Purity of Elements, so I swapped Flesh and Stone for Purity of Elements. Seems to work pretty well. (Oh it also has 2.4 ES regen per second with Discipline and immune to bleed with Malevolence. I got lucky, it wasn't that expensive either.)


I did wonder something though. What's the major difference between Toxic Rain and Caustic Arrow? I notice the damage mod base on Caustic Arrow is insane now. LIke it's sitting at 90k dot damage while my toxic rain says around 18k. Is it really that much stronger or does the tool tip lie?

The tooltip doesn't lie, exactly, but CA clouds don't stack, while TR pods do, and tooltip doesn't take into account a fair number of variables.

If I put a 21/20 CA in instead of my TR, my DOT dps drops from ~8 million to ~1.5 million. Admittedly, this is in a build optimized for TR, even so, I've played CA extensively over the years and it's never been at the same level as this TR setup.

Playstyle between the two is very different as well. CA you'll love sources of extra arrows - quivers that add an arrow are awesome, and you'll want deadeye or scion for the extra projectile as well. Pierce becomes a big deal, as any critter hit along the path of your arrows generates the CA cloud, so if you can pierce 3 targets between you and the final target, you get 4 total clouds, covering a much larger chunk of real estate. No stacking, so attack speed - and even just multiple attacks, become entirely useless. You'll fire once, through as much of the pack as you can, then run around casting support totems, traps, whatever, until everything dies.