[3.21] 🌿Ultimate Claw Poison Pathfinder - Untouchable Viper - Molten Strike update by FEL

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Essem wrote:

So on step 2 it needs 2 open prefixes correct?
After messing around in craft of exile doing this, you can be spending a metric ton of zeal essences since you need to start over unless you get really lucky with annuls since you might need to annul a suffix + 2 prefixes without hitting IAS and dot multi.[/quote]

Not really. If you get an empty prefix you can simply do suffix cannot be changed and scour.

Essences of zeal are super available this league if you use screaming (I did). You still get a T2 roll which is good enough and its not too bad to buy bundles of 30+ essences on trade for 1c each. Getting the 150 ish that you need on average isn't terrible.

I crafted 2 and they weren't that hard but yeah, you can get shit luck, like for everything in poe.

Here's my 3.15 post league writeup:

General thoughts
The build is still viable for all content but it lost a lot of damage and some defenses. Its a little bit trickier to push endgame now because you need a lot of gear to cover all the bases. I have not played 3.14 so I kind of got all the nerfs at once (Harvest + Claw Elder Mod + 3.15).

Damage
#1 The biggest loss comes from the removal of the 60% for poisons to deal 100% more damage. That alone was a 40-45% nerf to my 3.13 build in 3.14. Luckily, they buffed poison in 3.15 otherwise the build would have been dead.

#2 The support gems got nerfed a lot this league. Vile Toxins isn't as great as it was. In fact, its better to use Awakened Deadly Ailment now...

#3 The new multiplier mod on the elder claw combined with the harvest nerf makes crafting harder. This is not helped by the fact that we now need an open suffix for the crafted chaos multi mod... If you look at craftofexile (https://www.craftofexile.com/?b=11&m=fossil&f=|1|10|15|4|&i=|3|&ob=both&v=d&a=e&l=a&lg=7&bp=y&as=1&bld={}&ggt=|&ccp={}) you will notice that the usual fossil combination blocks almost ALL the prefixes except a few chaos ones. This means that before that change, the claws were easier to craft because you would almost always end up with an open prefix. Crafts almost always have more than 3 modifiers meaning that almost every single time you will end up with 3 suffixes. Annulling is super RNG because you need the two chaos prefixes with ideally attack speed to make the claw worth using. Try playing with it in craftofexile and you'll see that it doesn't make any sense. That's another indirect nerf because it was advertised as a buff by GGG...

#4 Flasks got gutted pretty hard but in our case it only applies to witchfire brew. Losing some damage there isn't the worse but it adds up.

Defenses
#1 Ailment immunity changes render master alchemist terrible. Enemies can re-apply ailments almost instantly because the node does not provide immunity for a duration of time like flasks do. That was the entire reason of taking the node because it granted immunity during flask effect and not it only removes them on flask use. This combined with the lowered charges gained makes it unusable.

#2 Curse immunity is totally lost. I would get destroyed by vulnerability maps before I switched to arctic armor

#3 Jade flask is basically halved, meaning that we can no longer get "good enough" molten shell buffs from it alone

#4 Rumi's got gutted as well with halved armour and lowered block chance. With this our block chance is no longer capped which also makes riposte worse...

#5 Quartz flask is not really worth using anymore, so we lose phasing. Which isn't THAT bad but in some situations, you'll wish you still had it. I guess we get to see our character mtx now at least...

Utility
#1 Mana cost is a little bit harder to deal with now. You need at least one way of making your skill affordable.

#2 Phasing is lost because you need to replace quartz to make up for Eva/Armour loss

#3 More buttons to press now because we need plague bearer for a very long time until gear makes up for all the damage losses

#4 Have to be careful for vulnerability maps due to losing curse immunity

Proposed changes

Change Loreweave to Perfect Form
This has multiple advantages and some downsides
+ This is a lot cheaper to get because loreweave requires a thread of hope (around 100-120c when I bought mine)
+ Perfect Form is easier to get with good rolls than loreweave for cheaper
+ Perfect Form makes reaching a good evasion threshold easier than loreweave
+ Not requiring Thread of Hope eases up the passive skill tree stress a little bit by freeing a few skill points
+ The jewel slot at 9 o'clock doesn't grant anything good (projectile damage). Replacing that with the one at 5 o'clock gives more evasion
+ Arctic armor is GREAT to help with physical damage mitigation
- Lose some elemental ehp but its still close to a million for hits so...
- Loreweave helps a lot with attributes requirement
- DoT sources are a lot spookier with lower resistances

Removed enhance in favor of Plague Bearer
+ Plague Bearer helps a lot early on when damage is not high enough to clear well. You can run on viper strike and clear with PB, or use PB to trigger pestilent strike chains
+ This is now also a lot cheaper because enhance 4 is omega rare
- This is a small nerf to damage because enhance allows you two more wither stack when using withering step. This can be made up by using withering touch on the totem though (for bossing)

Full ailment immunity
This one is a little bit more involved. I cut the entire top left part of the tree (west of blood drinker) and took the crystal skin+thick skin clusters as well as swift venoms to make up for damage loss. I also dropped master alchemist and took nature's adrenaline instead. The last 30% comes from synthesized boots like those

+ 100% ailment immunity feels great
+ +1 max res from crystal skin helps offsetting transcendence with the loss of loreweave
+ Crystal skin cluster gives +10% all res, making capping res a lot easier, allowing for easier crafting on gear
- Lose spell dodge/evasion from atziri's step
- Slight damage loss (2-3%)
- Slight life loss (200-300)

Changed Quartz Flask to a Basalt Flask of iron skin
+ Helps dealing with the evasion problem from jade flask nerf for bigger molten shell buffs
- Lose phasing and some dodge to hit/spell
- Lose warding for curse removal/immunity

Overall this feels good. Curses are annoying but not as deadly if you don't stack damage mods on top of them. Its a problem in simulacrum however... I don't have a good solution for curses.

Alleviate mana cost issues with Militant Faith
Get a 1% reduced mana cost of skills per 10 devotion roll. Its not a lot but it helps in a slot where other rolls aren't too useful
+ helps without tradeoffs
- a little bit expensive

Switch to hunter claws over elder
+ They are a LOT easier to craft in general (see guide in last page)
+ When crafting void fangs, they don't require harvest to get elder influence
- Lower damage than god tier elder claw, assuming they can be crafted
- Are somewhat expensive to make (expect maybe 8 to 10 ex per claw)

The rest is pretty much business as usual. I could provide crafting steps if someone cares. Here's my final gear (could be better, but its good enough)

nice build!

1. how to craft gloves?
2. do you think the added chaos on ring and amulet is worth not having -mana costs? i see in your videos you're running out of mana often
3. also wouldnt it be better to run the synthesized ring with + increased chaos damage over time, instead of herald of agony buff effect?
4. have you tried taste of hate? i see you're already using other ways of reducing physical damage taken with helmet (as fire) and crab barrier, so why not add more?

Patch notes looking to remove the transcendence bug. Wandering if the artic armor interactions are making us more tankier than we should be... It's going to be uber rough if physical damage suddenly goes up 5x on our 4k healthpools.

Anyways it was a fun build and I might try to round out this character later after getting 36.

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HamsterTrainer wrote:

Patch notes looking to remove the transcendence bug. Wandering if the artic armor interactions are making us more tankier than we should be... It's going to be uber rough if physical damage suddenly goes up 5x on our 4k healthpools.

Guess we will see how it turns out, but 4k is on the lower side with this build. 5k or even 5,5k should be achievable.

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__arqu__ wrote:

nice build!

1. how to craft gloves?
2. do you think the added chaos on ring and amulet is worth not having -mana costs? i see in your videos you're running out of mana often
3. also wouldnt it be better to run the synthesized ring with + increased chaos damage over time, instead of herald of agony buff effect?
4. have you tried taste of hate? i see you're already using other ways of reducing physical damage taken with helmet (as fire) and crab barrier, so why not add more?

1. I got somewhat lucky so I can't provide a proper guide here. I was spamming aberrant fossils and hit triple hunter mod with both chaos multi and +1 strike. I luckily maven orbed it to +2 strike removing the third hunter mod
2. Mana is fine as long as you are hitting, at least from my testing. I did not see a difference when I added the aspect, reserving the rest of my mana
3. This ring allows me to cap chaos resistance easily. Its a lot easier to get your hand onto and allows for some good implicits if you spend the currency. I like having capped chaos resistance but yeah if you can balance the build with a rare, go for it
4. I have not tested this. Which flask would you remove though?

thanks for answers!

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3. also wouldnt it be better to run the synthesized ring with + increased chaos damage over time, instead of herald of agony buff effect?

I mean in Circle of Nostalgia you can get either "Increased effect of HoA buff" or "Increased Chaos Damage while affected by HoA". Because the increased damage goes up to 60% it's much better in terms of dmg than slightly increasing the buff effect, isn't it?

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4. have you tried taste of hate? i see you're already using other ways of reducing physical damage taken with helmet (as fire) and crab barrier, so why not add more?
4. I have not tested this. Which flask would you remove though?

Obviously we cannot remove any of the unique flasks nor the life flask. This leaves the choice between Jade and Basalt. Jade gives much more armour than basalt, according to pob. And Jade is up much more often and doesnt have the annoying sound of basalt :D. If using curse on hit ring then replacing witchfire with a regular stibinite flask with "increased armour/evasion rating (whatever else you have on jade)" would be slightly better in terms of defenses.

in my pob:

Basalt Flask: +20k armour
Taste of Hate: +7k armour, and 25% increase of effective physical hp and 25% increase of effective cold hp. Of course this works only with Perfect Form - giving armour from overcapped cold resistance.

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__arqu__ wrote:

thanks for answers!

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3. also wouldnt it be better to run the synthesized ring with + increased chaos damage over time, instead of herald of agony buff effect?

I mean in Circle of Nostalgia you can get either "Increased effect of HoA buff" or "Increased Chaos Damage while affected by HoA". Because the increased damage goes up to 60% it's much better in terms of dmg than slightly increasing the buff effect, isn't it?

Ask Path of Building.
In past leagues (harvest, ritual) they were almost the same damage wise.

Seems like this build is getting furhter nerfed with transcendence incoming nerf.

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IlyaK1986 wrote:

Seems like this build is getting furhter nerfed with transcendence incoming nerf.

Not necessarily. Depends on Loreweave. If Loreweave stays the same, it's totally fine regarding Transcendence.

Bunch of other stuff will need rework.