Caustic Arrow Trickster Questions

Hello,

I'm planning to league start caustic arrow Trickster and I have some questions/looking for opinions on what to do.

1) What are the pros/cons between the life based builds of trickster CA and the CI CA builds.
2) Whats the general opinion around caustic arrow? Is it better as the single target skill while you use toxic rain for mapping? Or is it better to just use caustic arrow and gemswap for bosses.

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peotraxanas wrote:

Hello,

I'm planning to league start caustic arrow Trickster and I have some questions/looking for opinions on what to do.

1) What are the pros/cons between the life based builds of trickster CA and the CI CA builds.
2) Whats the general opinion around caustic arrow? Is it better as the single target skill while you use toxic rain for mapping? Or is it better to just use caustic arrow and gemswap for bosses.

CA is better for clear speed / killing a lot of low hp mobs fast. TR is better for sustained damage.

Advantage of CI is immunity to chaos damage (duh), ability to reliably use damage on full life support with 100% uptime, and you can ditch the life flask.

Advantage of hybrid life / ES builds is ability to pick acrobatics and stack much more dodge, benefitting from both life and es regen on patient reaper, and gearing could be a bit easier too.

I see, thanks for the info.

toxic rain vs ca...they are different builds that require different things and links. mostly that TR really needs a lot more attack speed while ca needs zero.

i wouldn't gem swap between them. but CA will clear much better, faster, and smoother than TR because its full damage is applied and doesn't have a big ramp-up like TR.
however TR is way better for bossing because of its higher damage capacity but its ramp-up time isn't friendly to moving/dodging and other stuff.

my best character in metamorph was a CA raider (trickster can get significantly higher dmg than raider version, but lower defenses) which had like 1.2m shaper dps on CA ,but i also used TR ballistas that i plopped down for bosses for the slow as well as some added damage.

Ok, I asked about TR cause I saw alot of people on poe.ninja using them both alongside each other so I was curious if there was some kind of synergy between them. I guess I'll go pure CA and figure stuff out from there. Thanks for the info.

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peotraxanas wrote:

Ok, I asked about TR cause I saw alot of people on poe.ninja using them both alongside each other so I was curious if there was some kind of synergy between them. I guess I'll go pure CA and figure stuff out from there. Thanks for the info.

Both of them scale with chaos damage so you can make a build that uses both, but one of them will be less optimized.

TR needs more attack speed and increased effect duration.

CA needs pierce and preferably extra arrows (quiver, bow, dying sun).

Both of them benefit from chaos damage, damage over time and increased area of effect. However area damage only benefits CA from what I know.

People could be using un-optimized CA for just map clear for example with arrow nova while their main skill is toxic rain.

Personally I'd say use them both as you level (CA you get at start, toxic rain at lvl 12 I reckon) and just see which one you like more, then tailor your gear and tree towards the one you picked.

The early nodes you can pick will benefit both so you won't get screwed. Meaning:
Hunter's Gambit
Method to the Madness
Entropy
Fangs of the Viper
Growth and Decay
Atrophy
That should give you decent boost to damage while levelling with either.

"

xMustard wrote:

my best character in metamorph was a CA raider (trickster can get significantly higher dmg than raider version, but lower defenses) which had like 1.2m shaper dps on CA ,but i also used TR ballistas that i plopped down for bosses for the slow as well as some added damage.

Tbh wondering myself which option is better for delirium, if GGG says mobs will gain health as you get deeper I'm worried CA will fall behind, on the other hand I played TR in legion and had problems covering enough ground in time to open the whole monolith, especially in cases of bosses and big chests that needed multiple TR hits to be opened. That ofc talking about moderate levels of gear not some fancy +5 bows etc. that are out of my budget plans.

ya i personally think all damage over time builds will fall behind, except maybe poison scourge arrow/crit poison blade vortex type builds. but like ED/contagion, bane, cold dot, chaos dot, i think will all be garbage. even most ignite builds i bet will be trash at the mechanic outside of their created maps.