Advice On Making Poison Builds In POE2? First Character.

Finally getting around to using my early access key as school is finished and I absolutely love poison in PoE.

Been doing some reading for past couple hours and some things concern and confuse me regarding poison in POE2.

1). Poison no longer stacks infinitely? It works like ignite or bleed sort of, where only the strongest applies? Is this true, and if so; does that mean it's pointless to have more than 1 poison skill in your overall build?

2) Keep reading that most poison skills are in a bad place, esp in the early part of the game so I don't want to waste the gemcutters etc...or whatever when I first find them.

3) Is PF the way to go still? I know PoE lets you do almost anything you want, but lets be real, PF or Assassin in the past were really the only viable options.
The new Gemling dude and Witchhunter seem cool and I like x-bows; although no idea how these ascendancy bonuses come into play with the new/changed poison mechs.

Thanks!

i am really struggling to see how their current poison design is supposed to work with herald of plague or pathfinder asc.

you have 2 seconds of poison, which spreads in a small radius upon death of the poisoned enemy. currently all skills designed around poison are aoe skills and the best one is arguably designed around being exploded. it feels like anti-synergy through and through.

i tried getting 40% poison chance on the tree to make a hard hitting single target poison hit, but the poison damage is piddly ( currently using high velocity bolt as i found the bow skills annoying to use/ too mana intensive and hvb has the highest attack stat and can naturally pierce for more aoe coverage).

1: poison has 1 stack baseline, can be increased via asc or tree nodes, but it always comes with a big downside like reduced duration or magnitude and only one gets spread, so it feels useless if you plan on using proliferation

2: the skills are... alright, atleast you can clear act 1 easily with them

3: pf looks like the best choice for ranged poison imho. asc nodes let you save herald of plague and have more range and additional stacks. being able to stay completely mobile is not to be underestimated for a dot build either.
poisonous conc could be the lynchpin for prolif builds, but i couldn't test it yet.
i could see gemling leg or chayula be alternatives, depending on how much gem levels/ quality influence initial hit damage for single hit poisons later on and how projectile damage compares to chaos damage for high single hit builds.

i could see monk become a contender for those builds, especially if daggers/ claws lend themselves to poison in some way, but you have use spirit on herald and melee

"

dragomob#6624 wrote:

i could see gemling leg or chayula be alternatives, depending on how much gem levels/ quality influence initial hit damage for single hit poisons later on and how projectile damage compares to chaos damage for high single hit builds.

This is something else I forgot to bring up - Do poison skills in PoE 2 scale gem levels or do you need a high phys bow/x-bow? I'm reading conflicting info, but maybe it'd due to being like PoE 1 where some used 2 types of bows?

TR and CA scale gem levels but Scourge Arrow and TR of Sporeburst are better with phys bows.

"

009Status#6939 wrote:

This is something else I forgot to bring up - Do poison skills in PoE 2 scale gem levels or do you need a high phys bow/x-bow?

TR and CA scale gem levels but Scourge Arrow and TR of Sporeburst are better with phys bows.

physical damage and (added) chaos damage are the only things affecting the poison output outside of poison magnitude afaik. it's really weird to try to find as much % physical and added physical on gear as a dot build -.-

gem levels are always useful, as they scale both attack % and the pois effect on the skill itself, so far it has been impossible to replace a bow with added level to proj skills with one without that.

"

009Status#6939 wrote:

Finally getting around to using my early access key as school is finished and I absolutely love poison in PoE.

Been doing some reading for past couple hours and some things concern and confuse me regarding poison in POE2.

1). Poison no longer stacks infinitely? It works like ignite or bleed sort of, where only the strongest applies? Is this true, and if so; does that mean it's pointless to have more than 1 poison skill in your overall build?

2) Keep reading that most poison skills are in a bad place, esp in the early part of the game so I don't want to waste the gemcutters etc...or whatever when I first find them.

3) Is PF the way to go still? I know PoE lets you do almost anything you want, but lets be real, PF or Assassin in the past were really the only viable options.
The new Gemling dude and Witchhunter seem cool and I like x-bows; although no idea how these ascendancy bonuses come into play with the new/changed poison mechs.

Thanks!

i wrote down my build (even thou the defenses were scuffed yesterday lol)
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3612906

1) correct. you can have 4 poisons if skilled and put in the support gem for +1

2) not the strongest, but you can have bleed added to the mix - its kinda working so far but im only in t5 maps

3) im gemling dude. poison herold is a useless trap. i wanted to start pathfinder (i think its trap too, because it only transports one poison and you can have plague explosions on every char) but started with merc-gemling: because you will have plus % gem quality, +1 all level and when its possible to ascend a third or even forth time another good option. either maxres or double-bonus from str/dex/int and skill gems can be used with whatever your max stat is

Sorry I'm 4 days late, but here I go.

Poison scaling is a bit more confusing in PoE2 than in PoE. Even after reading the Poison damage tooltip, it's unclear what affects it and what doesn't. Conflicting information available online.

Still, I started off with Pathfinder, poison stacking build. I'm currently using Gas arrow and Plague Bearer as a rare/entire screen killing skill, but I'm mostly shooting an arrow near a pack, and just moving around the map while shooting and looting. I'm aiming towards +1 poison nodes, + faster ailment damage nodes, + poison duration and poison magnitude nodes, and physical damage nodes as I'm using a physical bow. Projectile % damage nodes along the way as there isn't anything else close.

Plague Bearer does not benefit at all from weapon damage as far as I know, but being a physical skill, should benefit from physical damage % nodes on the passive tree, unless I'm clearly mistaken. However, there aren't a lot of those on the tree, so it won't scale very well into far endgame.

Herald of Plague and the Pathfinder Ascendancy poison spreading node seems to stack, but I really cannot say. While triggering Plague Bearer in a pack, the strongest or stronger two poison stacks are transfered from mob to mob, pushing to 8 stacks pretty fast and simply one shoting the screen, including rare mobs, if they're close together. It's quite satisfying to see rare dying in one second or less, but here again, it's good for low-mid level maps, but will be bad against bosses the higher our level is as it doesn't scale well with passives.

1) With my build, I have 8 stacks while using Gas arrow. It generates one or two stacks per seconds per gas arrow, but mobs usually die while low in stacks and spread them to the next ones, so the stack limit isn't really the important factor here unless we're talking rare in which case I shoot 2 or 3 arrows and move away. Bosses are something else entirely and require proper use of Vine arrow, plague bearer and gas arrow spamming while evading their one-shot attacks.

2) Early game : It was challenging up until my 4th Ascendancy points with my Pathfinder (double poison stacks) and up until I got Deadly poisons. Now at endgame : I cannot compare, but my gear is "OK", my resistance are bad and my bow slot could certainly gain a 35-40% damage increase. I'm pretty much one to two shoting packs in Tier 8/Tier 9 maps at lvl 79. Rare die in 2-3 seconds usually with Plague Bearer, sometimes less if they're in a pack. Big slam attacks and exploding mobs can kill me in one shot, and that's the only bad thing. Maybe I'll have to reduce my damage output to increase my survivability, but Evasion isn't good at all against AoE and physical slam/charge attacks/explosions, so unless I'm going to stack Armour or ES, I don't see how I can survive those hits except simply not being there when it happens.

3) I don't think PF is a trap, but I'm not doing red maps yet so my opinion might not matter. PF or Gemling probably are the best Ascendancies for this, but maybe one could figure something out with the Monk and a Chaos damage build. Gemling can benefit from multiple supports and a better Plague Bearer through the +1 gem level. Pathfinder benefits from the double poison stacks limit which is usually not that useful against trash mobs unless we're talking very high level maps which I didn't try. Gemling would certainly be way better at being a Plague Bearer spreader than Pathfinder is due to being able to get the same poison support gems (e.g. Deadly Poison) in both your main attack and your Plague Bearer.

"

009Status#6939 wrote:

"

dragomob#6624 wrote:

i could see gemling leg or chayula be alternatives, depending on how much gem levels/ quality influence initial hit damage for single hit poisons later on and how projectile damage compares to chaos damage for high single hit builds.

This is something else I forgot to bring up - Do poison skills in PoE 2 scale gem levels or do you need a high phys bow/x-bow? I'm reading conflicting info, but maybe it'd due to being like PoE 1 where some used 2 types of bows?

TR and CA scale gem levels but Scourge Arrow and TR of Sporeburst are better with phys bows.

It always does scale through gem level, but most "Attacks" based poisons are based off your Bow/Crossbow damage, with a small 5-10% damage increase per gem level. Plague Bearer, on the the other hand, is based off gem level, making it similar to spells when it comes to scaling. I almost doubled my Plague Bearer damage output by going from lvl 16 to lvl 18 I think.

In comparison, Gas arrow from lvl 16 to lvl 18 would get a base damage increase from 205 to 225% dmg or something like that.

Both are useful, but it's more impressive when it comes to flat damage like Plague Bearer.

Poison damage is based-off your Physical and/or Chaos damage from your active weapon. If your weapon does Physical damage only, only physical damage % nodes (or projectile damage, if using a projectile skill) and flat + chaos damage on items will affect poison damage. If your weapon does Chaos damage only (like that Zealot bow), then Chaos damage % nodes and flat + physical damage on items will affect your poison damage, but physical damage nodes will not affect it.

However, with the Plaguefinguer Gauze wraps (Unique gloves), poison damage magnitude is affected by all damage from hits (including elemental damage), so it thoerically makes + elemental damage on gear valuable, as long as you go for the projectile % damage nodes if you're using a projectile skill, for example.

"

dragomob#6624 wrote:

i am really struggling to see how their current poison design is supposed to work with herald of plague or pathfinder asc.

you have 2 seconds of poison, which spreads in a small radius upon death of the poisoned enemy. currently all skills designed around poison are aoe skills and the best one is arguably designed around being exploded. it feels like anti-synergy through and through.

i tried getting 40% poison chance on the tree to make a hard hitting single target poison hit, but the poison damage is piddly ( currently using high velocity bolt as i found the bow skills annoying to use/ too mana intensive and hvb has the highest attack stat and can naturally pierce for more aoe coverage).

1: poison has 1 stack baseline, can be increased via asc or tree nodes, but it always comes with a big downside like reduced duration or magnitude and only one gets spread, so it feels useless if you plan on using proliferation

2: the skills are... alright, atleast you can clear act 1 easily with them

3: pf looks like the best choice for ranged poison imho. asc nodes let you save herald of plague and have more range and additional stacks. being able to stay completely mobile is not to be underestimated for a dot build either.
poisonous conc could be the lynchpin for prolif builds, but i couldn't test it yet.
i could see gemling leg or chayula be alternatives, depending on how much gem levels/ quality influence initial hit damage for single hit poisons later on and how projectile damage compares to chaos damage for high single hit builds.

i could see monk become a contender for those builds, especially if daggers/ claws lend themselves to poison in some way, but you have use spirit on herald and melee

Might be a bit of a late response but you can absolutely do a 1-hit strong poison stack, but you're going to go bow and use Snipe.
Snipe, when successfully using the skillshot (i.e timing it correctly) is guaranteed crit and has a massive critical damage modifier. You're then going to get more crit damage from the tree + Sniper's Mark and also using Barrage for the extra projectile, it hits EXTREMELY hard.

You can get some really chunky single hit poisons that way.