Pathfinder - League Starter/SSF - Off-Meta - Blood Alchemist
 ------------------------------------------ MaxRoll Link: https://maxroll.gg/poe2/planner/cxgd70v4 I really don't like the way MaxRoll has their Planner set up as it doesn't give a great opprotunity to show specific steps of the build. I do however, like it's ease of use for showing off armor stats and skill set-up. Please take a look there if you have questions on those things. ------------------------------------------ End Game Example Reserved ------------------------------------------ 1. Introduction 2. Pros/Cons 3. How to play it 4. Ascendancy 5. Final Passive Skill Tree 6. Gear & Stats to look for 7. Act Walkthroughs 8. Problematic Enemies 9. Theorycrafting 10. Closing ------------------------------------------ 1. Introduction Hello there, if you are reading this, than you, like me, have been on the hunt for a decent guide to use that won't get you stuck in Endgame. I've been playing PoE for about 9 years now with ~3000 hours into it and I'm very passionate about the game and community, so I'm truly hoping this helps people out, at least a bit. I won't be able to respond here a ton, as I am a working Dad - so please be patient with me if you have questions or suggestions. As with everything in PoE2, the game is super new and things are changing constantly, so what might be viable today, might change tomorrow. I will try my best to keep things up to date here. An important note here is I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible for new players, utilizing only three spells at most, so you don't get overwhelmed. While I absolutely love the PoE community and how it constantly strives to obliterate the game by making insane builds, these are usually extremely daunting and confusing to players. I'm hoping this guide can serve as a jumping off point for players to learn the core concepts. Please also note I've gotten a few asks to post up my guides in Mobalytics and while I would love to post my guides in other places, I specifically tried this out and you cannot upload anything unless you are a verified partner with their site. Until that happens, I will continue to make builds right here. I've also started posting on MaxRoll which I will link to when I have it all set. If you ever have questions, please ask in the forum here or stop by my Twitch channel, I stream pretty often and would be happy to answer things live. I play typically on Standard league, to provide help for my friends, but if I'm testing out builds - it will be strictly self-imposed SSF. With all that out of the way, I'm excited to try this build out and update it as I progress. Mainly, this will use Bleeding Concoction to do tons of damage over time and up front physical damage. ------------------------------------------ 2. Pros/Cons Pros +++ Straightforward - Only uses a few abilities for the most part +++ Easy to Gear - no Uniques that are absolutely required +++ Room to Expand and add your own flare +++ Basically the same playstyle throughout the leveling +++ Mobility is great on the build +++ Not a huge amount of Pathfinder builds, it's fairly unique Cons --- Could be boring if 1-2 buttons isn't enough for you --- Relies on Mana Flasks, which is a weird mechanic for some --- Flask Siphon enemies destroy the build ------------------------------------------ 3. How to play it Reminder: I wanted to keep things as simple as possible for this build for new players to get through content and enjoy the game. There is plenty of room for more veteran players to pick this up and experiment/push the boundaries of this as well - more on that in theorycrafting sections. Important Note: This build comes online as soon as you pick up your Bleeding Concoction around mid 20's in Act II. Until then, you can just use poison Ranger skills to power through mobs. I. Bleeding Concoction
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This is the only ability you'll really be using. Bleeding Concoction works by throwing an arcing projectile at enemies that explodes and is guaranteed to bleed any enemies in the area of effect. This skill takes charges from your mana flask to use, so we will be stacking charge gaining nodes and gear to ensure we never run out.
Support Gems: Scattershot the way this is thrown out is typically in very tight clusters, allowing multiple instances of Bleeding Concoction to hit enemies. This overlap almost always gives us a net benefit over the attack speed and damage loss from the support gem. Brutality because we don't do any other damage type other than physical on h it. Close Combat the closer we are, the more damage we do. Generally, you don't like to be in things faces - but with the amount of enemies that sprint at you with sonic like speed is going to ensure this almost always gets a benefit. Heft more physical damage is great. Exploit Weakness The gist of the way this works is you break armor with Gas Arrow poisons, which causes and explosion of fire and then throw Bleeding Concoctions to consume the armor break for an Extra 50% damage to bleeding Concoction. We also take nodes that give us poison on hit and Maim, so you'll most likely just reapply a few very powerful debuffs to the enemies if they don't just die immediately from the huge physical damage the concoction tosses out. II. Toxic Growth
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This skill is great. We use this on tougher enemies and bosses. The order typically goes: we Gas Arrow, spam Toxic growth until the enemies armor is broken and then hit them with a bleeding concoction for the big damage boost.
Support Gems: Martial Tempo this skill can be a little awkward to use, it jumps us backwards and hangs us in the air for a few seconds, which can be really bad in a group of enemies. We use tempo to speed the whole animation up by 25%. Chaos Infusion this skill only uses chaos damage, so this just adds more of it. Magnified Effect the explosions of this skill can overlap which will cause huge damage and stun build up. Increased area will make that happen more often. Momentum the skill make us jump backwards some distance which means we only have to scuttle around a tiny bit more to improve damage by 40% more. III. Gas Arrow
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This ability is our enabler. We use Gas Arrow to sometimes prime our Toxic Growth, but more importantly is an incredibly easy way to break armor. Once armor is broken, you'll use Bleeding Concoction to consume the effect for 50% extra damage.
Corrosion This shreds armor while enemies are poisoned by the ability. Armor Explosion this will cause an explosion and will ignite your gas cloud for bonus fire damage. Deadly Poison for more damage and armor shred. Demolisher for more armor shred. IV. Buffs
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The Good -Alchemist's Boon we need more flask charges, so this is a must have. -Attrition this buff is great, but requires a ton of strength and dexterity investment which is why it's just okay for us. -Plague Bearer This allows us to release a poison nova once it reaches 100% from the poison damage we do. Once we get higher in levels, we will be proccing this constantly. -Wind Dancer a ton of Evasion for us and a really nice on hit defensive as well. We load this up with Blind & Maim to make sure enemies that hit us will have a harder time doing so again. The Okay -Time of Need Big Strength investment with this one, but the heal and cleanse are really nice. -Lingering Illusion It's nice because we don't have a lot of things to drop aggro if playing solo. The Power charge generation could also be neat in some sort of variant of the build. -Withering Presence debuff enemies around making them take additional chaos damage. Worth noting, this does not reduce enemy resists, it has it's own separate mechanics in the game. The Traps -Herald of Plague our Ascendancy already gives us the benefit of this skill. No real need to use it! ------------------------------------------ 4. Ascendancy We take Pathfinder here. We need it for our core skill Bleeding Concoction which the entire build is based around. We also pick up the poison nodes for a very powerful second damage over time ability to burn down packs and bosses faster. I. Ascension 1
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First up is Bleeding Concoction. As soon as we get our first points we can start using Bleeding Concoction and our build is mostly online at this point.
 II. Ascension 2
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Here you put your points or into Connected Chemistry, the reason being is that we won't get our Poison nodes until we start hitting the Cruel Acts, so boosting poison on the tree isn't entirely necessary at this point. 72% more Flask Charges gained is amazing for our sustainability though.
 III. Ascension 3
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We start moving over to poison nodes now and will just be going up this full branch to finish out our ascendancy. The first two nodes boost damage and give our strongest poison the ability to spread as if we had a version of Plague Herald active on us.
 IV. Ascension 4
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The final nodes here will have us finish out the poison branch, doubling the amount of poisons we can have on an enemy. At this point we should have a good amount of poison nodes so this will be a massive damage boost for us.
 ------------------------------------------ 5. End Game Passive Skill Tree  ------------------------------------------ 6. Gear and what to look for I. Body Armour & Helmet Anything that has Life, Resists, Spirit and Evasion is perfect. II. Boots Same as above, but we can't get spirit on boots so Movement Speed is the primary stat we are looking for. III. Gloves Added Physical Attack Damage, Attack Speed and Life Leech are great in addition to the standard Life, Evasion and Resists. IV. Rings If we can get some Mana Leech, that will help a lot with our sustain as we won't ever need to hit Mana Flasks. Added Physical Attack Damage and +%Chaos Damage are also very nice on rings. V. Neck Spirit Neck is great for helping out our buff limit. We want Life% increase and Projectile Skill Level increases on the neck. Damage recouped as life will also help our defensives. VI. Bow Something that adds levels to Projectile Skills. Otherwise, focus on more leech (life or mana) and a really beefy Physical Damage Bow. VII. Quiver Focus on getting a Toxic Quiver to help with our Bleeding Concoction procs. More levels to projectile skills and more added Physical attack damage are huge. Note: Toxic Quiver may actually be bugged. While other Quivers, like Sacral Quiver do in fact work with Concoctions (because they are unarmed weapon attacks) it doesn't look like Toxic is working this way. Either that or I am extremely unlucky with my procs. We pick up enough nodes to make this not a huge deal as we only lose around 15% proc rate for poison on Bleeding Concoction. ------------------------------------------ 7. Act Walkthroughs Note: I won't be going through a general guide here to get through the campaign and end game, I'm sure there are guides out there that would do a better job than I would, this is just generally where the build should be at each point in the game. We stack Dexterity and only get another stats if a gem or armor piece requires it. We will need to stack Strength for our shields to a certain extent, which is fine because Strength is also just bonus Life and let's us pick up some really nice defensives. I. Act 1
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Leveling up as this build is pretty smooth if you've played ranger before. You'll just use Poisonburst Arrow and Vine Arrow to get through Act 1. These skills get really strong as they level, but we typically switch over to just using Gas Arrow and Toxic Growth in Act 2 because its just stronger.
This build is consistently strong, which is really nice. It definitely has it's power spikes, but you shouldn't be struggling with any content as you progress. 14 Skill Points
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The first few skill points go into the close by clusters to make sure you are cruising through Act 1 without much difficulty.
 24 Skill Points
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In general, after the first few big nodes, we will want to start working our way down to Fast Acting Toxins and Wasting as soon as possible. We grab some more damage here to keep things consistent as well.
 II. Act 2
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More of the same as we grind through mobs and bosses with our damage set-up. If you are having trouble, keep a look out for a solid bow and quiver, even a level appropriate white can be crafted up to be something really amazing with some luck.
35 Skill Points
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We pick up Fast Acting Toxins and Wasting now our poisons will be stronger and we are getting primed to move over to Bleeding Concoction.
 44 Skill Points
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Now we pick up mana flask charges over time to help a lot with our sustainability once we move over to Bleeding Concoction.
 At this point, you should be hitting your Ascendancy trials for the first time - check out the Ascendancy section for information on that. That should wrap up Act 2 with you rolling into Act 3 with mostly rares and hopefully if you are lucky, 50-60% Resistances and with a good amount of Evasion. III. Act 3
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Things in Act 3 do a ton of chaos damage, there aren't a lot of things that help with that that are accessible for us right away, so this act tends to be very burst and 1-shot heavy. The best you can do here is keep your resists as high as possible while boosting your damage as much as possible at the same time. Keep your distance from enemies, you can even run away if things get too hairy and let your damage over time effects do the work.
52 Skill Points
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We grab some really heavy damage on this route with Heavy Ammunition. This will just make all of our Projectile skills do 40% more damage at the cost of 8% Attack Speed. Really not a bad trade-off.
 63 Skill Points
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Some more flask charge generation and we start dipping into Evasion nodes for some more consistent defensives. We should be running Wind Walker to help not get instantly one-shot from every enemy.
 71 Skill Points
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Now we start dipping into our damage over time layering with a big Poison node, giving us a chance to poison on hit, extra poisons and poison duration. Keep an eye out for a Toxic Quiver.
 IV. End Game
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Now you'll be getting into end game so we will start focusing more on what makes this build strong. This is also a great time to spread out and try things out for yourself and make some unique edits. I'll get into some ideas for that in my theorycrafting section.
84 Skill Points
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This is a really fun grouping of nodes we take. We'll be getting a chance on hit to blind enemies and a chance to maim poisoned enemies on hit. Both really big debuffs that will help us stay alive.
 94 Skill Points
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Nothing crazy here, we have to move down the highway for our next big nodes. we grab some more poisons and a jewel node.
 106 Skill Points
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Huge boost to our Evasion defensive here. We grab the Acrobatics Keystone as well to help with evading all attacks.
 111 Skill Points
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We grab some unarmed nodes here to specifically help us with Bleeding Concoction. We are boosting our area of effect (35%) and attack speed (20%) massively here with just four nodes.
 Final Tree
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We finish with our tree with the remaining big poison nodes. This will finish our tree out strong with hopefully little issue crushing the end game.
------------------------------------------ 8. Problematic Enemies
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-Iron Sharpshooter (Cruel Act 1) We don't take Physical Damage Reduction with this build so these guys do ridiculous amounts of damage with their rapid fire exclusively physical projectiles. They usually show up in packs too, which is even worse.
-Constricted Spitter (Cruel Act 3) Hoooo boy, do these guys suck. They have a ton of HP, deal tons of upfront physical damage (our weakest defense) and poison on top of that. They can tear through ~3k eHP in seconds flat. They also can stun us.... a lot. Be super careful around these packs. ------------------------------------------ 9. Theorycrafting I'll go over some of my ideas for alternatives for the build or how to make it just generally better while adding some complexity to it. Please feel free to also hit me up with your own suggestions or if I overlooked something here. I. Critical Strike
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Bleeds with Critical Strike could be pretty fun, I haven't tried it out, but I don't think we have enough supportive skills to make this shine.
II. Bleed Magnitude
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There are a bunch of Bleed Magnitude nodes near Warrior and Mercenary trees, but these are super awkward to get. There are also some projectile boosting nodes around that area which make it not too terrible, but the damage here doesn't outweigh the poison stacking and attack boosts we get in the tree from my experiences.
III. Minions
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I played around with a Sceptre and Shield as Bleeding Concoction doesn't care what weapon set you are using. This felt okay, but we don't take any minion nodes so things just feel incredibly weak.
IV. Block
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There are some really good shield nodes close-by to our tree, but again we would be sacrificing a ton of damage to get our block chance up there. We would also be restricted to a one-hander so our bonuses to projectiles from Bow and Quiver would go away. All in all, not worth it I think.
------------------------------------------ 10. Closing This build is still going through the campaign and so far it's super smooth. I'll be streaming the progress and I'll keep this page updated as I progress. Feel free to stop in and ask about progress or if you have questions on any of my other builds. Thanks for reading, see you later exiles! Last edited by Kobyjoe#5354 on Dec 21, 2024, 8:21:56 PM Last bumped on Dec 21, 2024, 5:20:17 PM
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