Vaal Caustic Arrow

Character: OptiBaits. 6L vaal caustic arrow in bow, 6L toxic rain totems in chest. Currently lvl 95 Champion in hcssf.

Feedback: Vaal caustic arrow is a nice bonus, but in the end is less impactful than I feel a Vaal skill should be due to two issues.

First, it's AoE is very small so it's very easy to just do no damage at all. If compensated by using a support to help out its AoE then you've made your build considerably worse overall for sometimes still no benefit (even the best AoE supports still have enemies move out of its aoe).

Secondly, it's soul gain prevention is long enough that again punishes you very hard if the boss moves out of the AoE. While the ground lasts a long time, this really only matters vs completely stationary bosses, while your soul gain prevention lasts even longer.

If just one of these two were improved it would make a big difference for not feeling as punished by a mobile or teleporting boss.

An alternative to help with this would be if Vaal Caustic Arrow put a debuff on the boss or DoT, that would linger or last a duration even if they move out of the ground (similar to flame wall functionality).

Character: Quatanga (lvl 94)
Class: Occultist (Unholy Authority, Profane Bloom, Void Beacon, Withering Presence)
League: Sanctum Softcore Trade
Supportive Skills: Wither Totems (to help stack wither faster while Withering Presence maintains it), and Bane linked with Despair, Temporal Chains, and Enfeeble.
Highest Content So far: Regular Sirus/Eater of Worlds/Searing Exarch/Shaper.



Feedback: Caustic Arrow has never suffered terribly for clear. Was it as fast as other builds? No, but it was fairly consistent. Its main problem has always, ALWAYS, been bosses. Or obscenely tanky rares, life regen is also a problem, but as an occultist I negate that with Void Beacon. Scaling its damage while maintaining survivability has always been a frustrating thing.

Vaal Caustic Arrow (VCA) only somewhat helps, against STATIONARY bosses, or bosses that have predictable animations where you know they will be one spot for a period of time. The second however requires you to hold your VCA until the opportune time rather than actually use it. An example being the only time I'd use VCA for its full duration against Sirus is when he puts you in that walled corridor and chucks meteor balls at you down the lane which requires facetanking them or actually dodging, otherwise you'll never get the full duration.

Any boss that teleports around, or even just takes a few steps here and there, can completely negate Vaal Caustic Arrow, and that feels aweful to fire off your super skill only for the enemy to 'lol ima sidestep'. Sometimes it forces you to try to face tank inside the VCA caustic ground effect to get maximum benefit which... can get mixed results.

I do agree with Habbey's suggestion that Vaal Caustic Arrow applies a lingering damage debuff even if the enemy moves out of the caustic ground. It would help a bit. Especially if Caustic ever wants to try Uber Bosses.

I shudder at the thought of how mind-numbingly long those fights must be with Caustic subpar boss damage.

P.S. Can we get a wither stack debuff icon on enemies to know when they hit full stacks as that is the ideal time to let loose VCA.

P.P.S. Can we also get some kind of indication for Curse Mastery 'Your curses have 20% increased effect if 50% of Curse Duration expired.'? Maybe the curse symbols above monsters glow brighter or briefly flash or something?