[3.12] Hasunic's Toxic Rain / Caustic Arrow Trickster | Leaguestarter | Ailment Immunity | SSF

Thinking of playing this next league, can someone tell me the pros and cons of the build?

What are it's strengths and then weaknesses?

Is Gem swapping needed to play efficiently? or weapon swapping etc?

Why no pros/cons on main post? Why no mention of attainable DPS? Seems like a noob trap or am i wrong?

Thanks

So the POB fork shows that the dps is limited upper ceiling by the number of projectiles. So base would be 5 overlapping pods total, can anyone confirm if this is accurate as scaling projectiles/APS/Duration may be overkill until you can push the number of projectiles up past 7 or 8.

To increase the damage you need to increase overlap (aoe size) before number of projectiles, in vast majority of scenarios you're capped on overlap way before you're capped on number of projectiles.

More projectiles mostly helps to increase the total clear area of each cast, so mostly in mapping if you don't use CA for that. You can get 5 base + 1 from helmet enchant + 2 from alternate quality gem (good look getting that one at 21/20 though) + 2 from dying sun + 1 from quiver + 2 from bow.

But getting those extra arrows on bow / quiver together with other good stats is very hard to craft, and will still be moderately hard even if harvest is back (assuming it's not completely wrecked). Getting dot multi or attack speed roll on these items might just be easier to acquire.

If you roll a Pathfinder you can get another arrow by pushing increased flask effect to +50% (20% ascendancy + 20% cluster jewel with spiked concoction / alchemist genius + 10% belt craft or 2 small nodes next to primal spirit) and then Dying Sun gives 3 projectiles. You also get 50% increased aoe size (increased not more sadly). So if you really care to push number of projectiles there's that.

You can check Remi's guide to toxic rain pathfinder in the ranger section with calculations of breakpoints between aoe size and number of projectiles, but TLDR you will never get everything to overlap anyway.

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Viktranka wrote:

To increase the damage you need to increase overlap (aoe size) before number of projectiles, in vast majority of scenarios you're capped on overlap way before you're capped on number of projectiles.

You can check Remi's guide to toxic rain pathfinder in the ranger section with calculations of breakpoints between aoe size and number of projectiles, but TLDR you will never get everything to overlap anyway.

What POB fork seems to indicate is that your max projectiles limits your maximum overlap despite the rest of the factors.

I have played TR plenty before, I love it for SSF so my questions I guess are geared more towards whats the first big focus if this is true?

Do you try hardest for +1 Proj bow and quiver?

Ill check out the calculation for overlap, just curious why the POB fork hard caps dps as your maximum proj cap.

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AutoQQ wrote:

Ill check out the calculation for overlap, just curious why the POB fork hard caps dps as your maximum proj cap.

I don't get your question really. The overlap is set manually. You can set it to max number of projectiles but that doesn't make it true in-game. Yes, you cannot exceed number of projectiles in the overlap count but putting 7 or 8 there is in most cases similar lie as old POB that put shock at 50% increased.

Realistically most setups will have somewhere between 4-6 on the overlap count depending on their gear / ascendancy / clusters.

Even if you can get 12 arrows you will never have a 12-overlap count, that's pure POB warrior thing.

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Viktranka wrote:

Realistically most setups will have somewhere between 4-6 on the overlap count depending on their gear / ascendancy / clusters.

Even if you can get 12 arrows you will never have a 12-overlap count, that's pure POB warrior thing.

Sorry I am just trying to figure out how the max proj plays into overlap.

Does this mean that I can never have more than 5 pods overlap if I have 5 max proj?

Or rather is it the case that I can have 5 per shot?

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AutoQQ wrote:

Sorry I am just trying to figure out how the max proj plays into overlap.

Does this mean that I can never have more than 5 pods overlap if I have 5 max proj?

Or rather is it the case that I can have 5 per shot?

POB overlap is per cast of TR. You can have more active overlap by old pods overlapping the new ones, but that one doesn't need to be set manually as POB-fork will count it as a factor of attack speed vs pod duration. That's why the old way to scale TR to max (during delirium before cluster jewel nerf) was to increase duration as much as possible.

The only downside of scaling duration too much is mobile targets (like Sirus teleporting around) can just move around and the extra duration is lost.

Scaling attack speed also allows to squeeze more casts in 1 duration window, but there are 2 reasons to lose dps here: 1 if you have to move and stop casting (for example you're getting Sirus beam to the face), time spend moving loses you any casts in that time, and 2: mana - if you don't bring TR cost to 0 mana, it will become more pressing matter the more attack speed you have.

Now "per cast overlap" which POB asks indeed cannot exceed the number of projectiles you have in that cast for obvious reasons, but several reports of tests said that increasing number of projectiles tends to spread them apart more and more. Meaning the more projectiles you have, the harder is to make the overlap. So sacrificing other dps stats for extra projectiles is rarely worth it, it's only worth it if you can get it without sacrificing something else - tbh this whole skill is about balancing different useful stats than purely stacking one of them (projectiles, inc aoe, inc duration, attack speed, and plain damage modifiers / multipliers).

Thanks Viktranka, this helped clarify what I was wondering about per attack/cast and overlap dealing with max proj.

I think I found a good balance for an SSF setup set on 2.5-3 APS 20 aoe and about 2.3 duration, giving me close or just over 10m (when all goes perfect) dps.

You answered all I needed thanks again.

I was pondering league starting 3.13 with this build. I've not had time to read the patch notes though, and I'm unsure if it's still viable given the various ascendency changes.

What do you all think? Still solid?

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Vickery wrote:

I was pondering league starting 3.13 with this build. I've not had time to read the patch notes though, and I'm unsure if it's still viable given the various ascendency changes.

What do you all think? Still solid?

PoB says that we lost about 100k DoT dmg, but when you have 1.2kk/2kk (no clusters/2 clusters) damage it's not that important.

Acts will get a little difficult because we're not getting 50% Inc DoT from ascendancy, but that's literally nothing. My plan B is to go through acts with +1 wands and ED, but I don't think that will happen.