[3.9] [Updated] Caustic Arrow CI Trickster - Very tanky, fast mapper, safe playstyle
 Welcome to my Caustic Arrow Trickster guide. So, after my Scourge Arrow I decided to give a shot to another bow skill on new Trickster, and Caustic Arrow looked perfect, because I can fully abuse all defensive capabilities of this ascendancy. That is Ghost Shrouds and going ES and eva hybrid while getting insane recovery when something hits me, DoT on kill regen and recharge what basically keeps me always on full energy shield during mapping and also Soul Strike for very fast start of ES recharge. Trickster also has some huge DoT damage boost in ascendancy, what works really really well with CA. All this combined together results in probably the safest character I ever played with respectable single target damage and awesome clear speed. Thanks to all points I mentioned above, this build is very viable for HC players, because we can fully focus on defense on our gear and in the end we can end up with over 9k EHP with multiple layers of defense. Changelog
Spoiler
13th January 2020 - Dropped Blast Radius and changed pathing to path from top - Grabbed some extra energy shield nodes, Utmost Intellect and Piercing Shots with saved points - Dropped Voidwalker boots for Sin Trek as we no longer need the extra pierce 7th January 2020 - Added Thread of Hope and grabbed Silent Steps and Phase Acrobatics 6th January 2020 - Reworked level 100, 90, 80 and 70 tree - Removed level 60 tree for now - Removed QoTF setup for now - Removed budget setup for now - Replaced Vicious Projectiles bow with +3/dot multi/chaos multi bow - Added weapon swap with Caustic Arrow + Nova for clear - Added 2 new gameplay videos - Updated gear to not include legacy items after ES/quality nerfs - Switched rare belt to Ascent from Flesh - Added Withering Step - Replaced Blink Arrow with Smoke Mine - Replaced self cast wither with Wither totems - Added Frenzy + curse on hit setup - Added Flesh & Stone and dropped Aspect of Spider 12th August 2019 - Changed level 60 tree to leveling tree - Removed some inc chaos damage nodes at shadow start and replaced them with more defensive nodes - Slightly optimized all trees 5th August 2019 - Replaced Dash with Frostblink - Increased Immortal Call level to level 9 - Added Wind Dancer (and dropped some other nodes in return) 2nd August 2019 - Replaced Arctic Armour with Flesh & Stone in budget setup 30th July 2019 - Removed Witchfire Brew flask - Removed Vaal Cold Snap - Removed Vaal Haste - Changed Wither setup to self cast - Added Infused Channeling to Wither setup - Added Frenzy + Curse on Hit + Despair setup - Removed Phase Run - Added Dash 1st July 2019 - Replaced jewel near Utmost Intellect with Eldritch Knowledge 6th Jun 2019 - Removed Toxic Rain section (again) - Removed Web Preview info - Added Efficiacy back to Phase Run + Vaal setup - Properly colored and linked all items used in build in PoB 5th Jun 2019 - Changed tree because of 3.7 update - Removed Solstice Vigil setup - Switched to Voidwalker boots from Pierce on tree - Added Spirit Offering to CWDT setup - Added Vaal Haste - Added Budget setup - Improved QoTF setup - Switched to Utmost Intellect ES node 21th May 2019 - Added setup without Solstice Vigil, what is slightly more tanky - Moved some gems around to fit new alternative builds - Added Faster Attacks to main Blink Arrow setup 20th May 2019 - Replaced Chaos Golem setup in Budget/QoTF version with Frenzy 16th May 2019 - Moved movement setup to body - Moved auras to helmet - Added Summon Chaos Golem for Budget and QoTF setups - Added budget movement setup - Removed flame dash movement setup - Removed Main Skill gems sections 15th May 2019 - Replaced Enhance in movement setup with Culling Strike - Added another movement skill setup to guide - Added Queen of the Forest body gem variation and Item set 14th May 2019 - Replaced Storm Brand + COH + Temporal Chains with CWDT + Temporal Chains in budget setup - Added less off-color (budget) setup for movement 12th May 2019 - Added leveling trees - Added budget setup for body - Removed Toxic Rain tree and setup 8th May 2019 - Added Uber Elder video 7th May 2019 - Replaced Granite flask with Quartz flask - Added Malevolence Bleed Watcher's Eye to PoB (and prioritized it over DoT multi) 5th May 2019 - Updated Pantheon gods - Replaced ES helmet with Eber's Unification 4th May 2019 - Added Shaper gameplay video - Replaced faster start of ES recharge craft on ring with mana + damage as mana 3rd May 2019 - Added 2 new gameplay videos 2nd May 2019 - Added Toxic Rain section - Added more info to Toxic Rain section - Updated PoB to also contain Toxic Rain gem setup and passive tree 1st May 2019 - Created the guide - Added Lava Lake preview video - Cleaned up the post - Optimized bow - Added budget bow to PoB - Replaced boots with slightly better ones - Added Atziri preview video - Replaced +1 to minimum frenzy charges with intelligence suffix on ring - Replaced Synthetized bow with Elder Vicious Projectiles bow - Replaced Intelligence suffix on ring with faster start of energy shield recharge prefix Pro's & Con's + Awesome clear speed - At higher levels our DoT "one shots" packs and with extra pierce and arrow nova we can cover whole screen with caustic clouds + Decent lab runner (because of our high movement speed, damage, self-regen from Ghost Shrouds and super fast ES recovery) + 269% increased movement speed + 9.7k Energy Shield + 1.03s delay to start ES recharge + Energy Shield recharge cannot be interrupted if it began recently (because of Wicked Ward) + 40k Evasion if hit recently, 20% less damage taken if not hit recently (thanks to Wind Dancer) + 93% melee avoid chance, 93% projectile avoid chance, 50% spell avoid chance, 9% reduced damage taken + 1600 ES gained per Ghost Shroud on hit + Stun immune (because of Ghost Shrouds) + Chaos immune (because of Chaos Innoculation) + Freeze and Chill immune (because of Dream Fragments) + Very safe playstyle. Because we are DoT build we can focus only on dodging and avoiding attacks + Can do any content in the game (except Hall of the Grandmasters because some characters there are CI) - That means no worries about ES recharge, leech, mana leech, regen, any kind of damage reflection + Only 6 link required is our bow (and it can be easily crafted) - Single target is not that awesome. With optimized gear and gem swap we can get up to 2M effective DPS, what is pretty decent, but it can't really compete with meta builds - For maximum damage and clear effectiveness we need either white socket on bow (for Concetrated Effect/Arrow Nova swap) or weapon swap with 2 setups - We need plenty of strength from gear to meet gem stat requirements - Min-maxing the build can be quite expensive, but the build itself is very flexible and do not requires a lot of investment to make it work Content Done - All guardians - All elderslayers - Atziri - Uber Atziri - Mastermind - Shaper - Uber Elder My characters using this build - Metamorph character Path of Building Path of Building is tool for PoE to plan gear, skill tree and calculate effective damage. It also contains Bandits choice. You can download it here. Then simply import below Pastebin URL. Pastebin
Navigating through PoB (important, read carefully)
There are 4 trees, for level 100, 90, 80 and 70. Use dropdown in bottom left corner of Tree section in PoB to cycle between them. Tree contains workaround jewel for Wind Dancer keystone near Perfect Agony (we actually do not use perfect agony, it gets replaced by wind dancer). To get this keystone simply get Brutal Restraint jewel with modifier Denoted service of (500–8000) dekhara in the akhara of Deshret. Only the name (Deshret) is important. There are 2 weapon skill gem sets: - Bossing: Here, we are using Concentrated Effect as 6th link for maximum damage - Mapping: Here, we are using Arrow Nova as 6th link to optimize our clear speed. Bossing/Mapping are basically gem swaps, swapping Concentrated Effect and Arrow Nova (requires white socket on bow, or what I personally prefer, weapon swap) Pantheon For major god Soul of Lunaris is good safety pick for mapping and some extra damage avoidance. Another great option is Soul of Solaris for extra safety on bosses. For minor god Soul of Gruthkul is great choice for even more phys reduction (what we kind of lack in this build) and another slow. Ascendancy Get Patient Reaper first. Then get Ghost Dance and Escape Artist for some survivability and finally get Prolonged Pain from Uber Lab.
Leveling
As you can use Caustic Arrow from level 1, just use it the whole time. For smoother leveling try to get fast AS bow early and just craft some chaos damage to it. If you can, get Silverbranch and then Silverbought and just socket your Caustic arrow inside of it for some nice level boost, otherwise you can just use Tabula Rasa. You can start with Caustic Arrow + Pierce Support + Onslaught Support links. Pierce is very important for CA because it creates additional clouds for each target pierced and Onslaught is decent for fast leveling At lvl 4 socket Mirage Archer to your Caustic Arrow, then your leveling should feel pretty smooth. Keep socketing supports that main build is using as soon as they are available. At start just play as Life/ES hybrid. When you will reach at least 4k ES with ES gear you can start thinking about moving to CI. Media Mapping Dig Lvl 76 Lava Lake Lvl 77 Defiled Cathedral Lvl 80 Temple of Atzoatl Lvl 81 Core Lvl 86 (GMP test) Acid Caverns Lvl 85 Delving Delve Depth 188 Beyond Lvl 83 Delve Depth 224 Lvl 80 Bossing Atziri Lvl 78 Shaper Lvl 81 Nexus Boss Lvl 88 Pit of the Chimera Lvl 88 Forge of the Phoenix Lvl 88 Lair of the Hydra Lvl 88 Maze of the Minotaur Lvl 88 Uber Elder Lvl 90 T16 Drox Lvl 80 My builds: https://pobb.in/u/thedeathbeam My site: https://mapsofexile.com/ Last edited by thedeathbeam on Jan 13, 2020, 4:44:46 PM Last bumped on Apr 12, 2020, 9:08:41 PM
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Added new preview video of Lava Lake. I died once by accident (standing in DoT) but it was probably the smoothest t15 run I had with any character so early in progression (I am still just leveling the char). So here is the video (I also already added it to main post):
Lava Lake Lvl 77 My builds: https://pobb.in/u/thedeathbeam My site: https://mapsofexile.com/ Last edited by thedeathbeam on May 1, 2019, 9:06:48 AM
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Small update:
- Optimized best bow: Replaced +2 to level of socketed bow gems to +1 to level of socketed gems. - Added budget bow to PoB: Basically just ilvl 64+ 6 linked bow with +1 to socketed gems and +2 to socketed bow gems with +2 to socketed support gems craft Here is updated PoB: https://pastebin.com/8Zd7KZT7 I also already updated main post (both PoB and web preview links) My builds:
https://pobb.in/u/thedeathbeam My site: https://mapsofexile.com/ |
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Another preview video:
Atziri Lvl 78 As you can see, it was really simple and straightforward. As we do not need to care about reflect at all, there is not really anything that can kill us here. My builds:
https://pobb.in/u/thedeathbeam My site: https://mapsofexile.com/ |
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As Synthesis is not going core and I want to keep this build future-proof, I removed Synthetized bow from guide and replaced it with +1 Vicious Projectiles multimodded bow. This loses us around 150k DPS, but it's fine.
Here is updated PoB (main thread is already updated too): Pastebin (Web Preview) My builds:
https://pobb.in/u/thedeathbeam My site: https://mapsofexile.com/ |
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Added section about Toxic Rain as it can almost be played as drop-in replacement in this build, with better DPS but much worse clear. For more details check the Using Toxic Rain instead of Caustic Arrow section in main post I just added.
My builds:
https://pobb.in/u/thedeathbeam My site: https://mapsofexile.com/ |
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Updated the Toxic Rain section. I did some calculations, and with this build the actual Toxic Rain DPS is over 4.5M, what is pretty nice (that is with +1 quiver and +1 helmet enchant and Mirage Archer instead of conc effect).
I also added link to DPS calculator for Toxic Rain to main thread. My builds:
https://pobb.in/u/thedeathbeam My site: https://mapsofexile.com/ |
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Added budget item set to the PoB that is not using Dying Sun, Solstice Vigil and +1 curse high rolled chest. Instead it is using Carcass Jack, Vixen's Entrapment and Bane to apply Temporal Chains.
You can see this new item set simply by switching to Budget in PoB in items section. Here is updated PoB: Pastebin (Web Preview) My builds:
https://pobb.in/u/thedeathbeam My site: https://mapsofexile.com/ |
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Made small changes to PoB again:
Pastebin (Web Preview) - There are now 2 item sets, Default and Budget. Budget item set contains cheaper item alternatives and less uniques. - There are now 2 passive trees, Caustic Arrow and Toxic Rain. Toxic Rain tree is just pierce nodes changed to some accuracy and damage nodes. - There are now 3 weapon skill gem sets, 2 are for gem swaps for bossing/mapping with Caustic Arrow and 3rd is for Toxic Rain if you want to play it My builds:
https://pobb.in/u/thedeathbeam My site: https://mapsofexile.com/ |
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Added 2 new gampleplay videos:
Defiled Cathedral Lvl 80 Temple of Atzoatl Lvl 81 Had to cut Temple right after boss because ad on YouTube started playing so it's not full run. My builds: https://pobb.in/u/thedeathbeam My site: https://mapsofexile.com/ Last edited by thedeathbeam on May 3, 2019, 2:05:52 PM
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